Book Review: The Optimist: Sam Altman, OpenAI, and the Race to Invent the Future
There is no doubt that the future belongs to the people, institutions, and nations that can best harness AI.
The AI era has begun, and AI-related technological innovations are already making a world-changing impact on almost every industry known to mankind. There is no doubt that the future belongs to the people, institutions, and nations that can best harness AI.
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I figured it would be a good idea to read the new book, The Optimist: Sam Altman, OpenAI, and the Race to Invent the Future, written by the Wall Street Journal’s Keach Hagey.
The book covers the history and present of AI, and the roles played by Google, OpenAI, and other major companies in facilitating this technological quantum leap forward. It also serves as a biography of Sam Altman, widely regarded as one of the founding fathers of the AI era. Hagey offers quality insight into the political ideologies and the policy priorities of the Silicon Valley/AI elite class, which often run in paradox to their ambitions.
By the way, I’m writing this “review” (and future reviews) in a somewhat unorthodox fashion, to get away from the stuffy, suspect, and agenda-driven “reviews” you’ll find in the corporate media. These are my honest thoughts, and I hope you find them valuable. My write-up comes to you after I read the book over the course of a few weeks. Some information may not be entirely accurate. If you want to cite any of this, please ensure that you do so only after double-checking for accuracy.
First, let’s start with Sam Altman, the founder and leader of OpenAI.
Unsurprisingly, he is brilliant, like most of his peers in the space. Altman is definitely a nerd and proficient in all things computer-related, but he stands out more as an incredibly adept networker and C-suite executive. Altman did not invent anything per se in the AI space, but in another life, he would undoubtedly be capable of doing so. He has Elon Musk-level ambition, and it’s clear he’s also ruthlessly competitive. Altman has supreme instincts and incredible talents. It is no surprise that he has managed to find himself leading the world’s frontier AI corporation. OpenAI is far from its only success. As the former head honcho of Y Combinator, Altman has dedicated his time, energy, and networking resources to a variety of promising companies, some of which have already become very valuable. Yet his work at OpenAI is what definitely upgraded his standing from merely a VIP technology executive to something of a global household name.
On the other hand, his moral reasoning and political philosophy are ever-changing, intellectually stunted, and overall, very confusing. And his claimed political objectives often conflict with his business ambitions.
OpenAI began as a nonprofit with the stated, lofty goal to serve as an overall benefit to humanity. Today, it is a private for-profit corporation with a valuation soaring over $500 billion. This “transition” and some fascinating tales along the journey from underdog startup to top of the food chain are covered thoroughly in the book. From the early days of OpenAI, involving Elon Musk and the Effective Altruists (more on that in a second), to the current, super-polished iteration of the company, the organization behind ChatGPT has come a long way in less than a decade.
Politics is a constant theme. Right-wing politics are considered uninformed and immoral.
Altman lives in a giant bubble in which he is surrounded by liberals, leftists, and hyper-wealthy left-wing tech bros from the Effective Altruism (EA) movement, which can be understood as something like Walmart Ayn Rand meets a chock-full of socialism. Altman operates in an environment where religion is considered primitive and dull, while transhumanism and the seeking of immortality are considered enlightened and of the highest moral order. The West Coast tech bro elites don’t believe in God, but many seek to wield God-like powers. These circles suffer from a major groupthink problem.
Nonetheless, from Altman’s time to Stanford to the present day, it’s clear he’s become more and more detached from any kind of philosophical structure. For some in the tech field, including Altman, politics is merely window dressing for successful networking. In business, Sam Altman is guided by a competitive spirit and a drive to innovate. In his personal life and through his broader ideological ambitions, he doesn’t seem to really know what he believes in anymore. I’ll take that over the transhumanists who seek to dominate the space.
After finishing The Optimist, I find myself concerned about the concentration of quasi socialist, completely Godless political ideology that is running rampant in the AI industry, and the hard-charging political ambitions of the well-funded Effective Altruism movement, which again, stinks of a modern socialist “rationalist” rebrand. Still, many of these industry powerhouses, whether represented through the likes of Google, Microsoft, Anthropic, xAI, OpenAI, and other competitors in the space, will be the groups that help define America’s qualitative technological standing into the future. If I were a member of the conservative donor class, I would dedicate some time, energy, and resources to introducing functional political philosophy into these spaces. Suppose we want these ideologically confused megacorps to get interested in prioritizing American interests (while building flourishing technological innovations). In that case, there needs to be a more concerted effort to infiltrate these spaces with American founding ideals.
If you want to read more about the innovations that sparked the AI era, I would recommend skipping over the largely irrelevant details about Sam Altman’s personal life. I recommend starting with the parts of the book that discuss DeepMind (now part of Google) and the beginning of the AI era.
I couldn't imagine a worse group of people with this power. And the really frightening thing is that these amoral sociopaths who LARP as "ethical" have all the power - they restrict the public from using their models at will, by curating the feeding and turning on lots of rules. But within these organizations, the *employees* can do what they wish with these tools.
I reality intelligently disagree. The good future of humanity does not lie in the use of collective artificiality but in the collective embracement and overpowering employment of our God given individualist natural gifts of creativity, independent thought, collective learning and critical thinking. Not to mention a good amount of grit and determination.