Decoding Sam Altman's brain, OpenAI and Future of Earth for us!

Met Sam Altman, here's how Sam thinks, so that you can get ahead!

May 01, 2023

When people ask me the best way to live life, my answer is to meditate on your mortality, your death, just like some of the most successful human beings have done on earth in the past.

It makes you think of life from a perspective when you are no more on earth. Hence, you focus only on what’s truly important.

We become the stories we repeat in our minds, so I have become one of those who have meditated on mortality over all these years. And this letter is coming from a similar place in my heart.

Over the last 3 days during the Wisdom 2.0 conference, among all the sessions I attended at the intersection of AI & Mindfulness and discussions with Spiritual Leaders, Healers, Meditators, and Startup Founders, one thing was clear, ChatGPT was on everyone’s mind.

The media has been sharing that ChatGPT can take up to 500 million jobs over the next 10 years. And the impact would mainly be on the knowledge workers of the society. Knowledge workers developed knowledge & skills over the years as a part of society - to feed their families and live fulfilling lives.

To truly understand the impact of ChatGPT, the best way could be to understand the corporation that owns it called as OpenAI. And to analyze a corporation like OpenAI and its future, the best way I know is to analyze the founder’s mind. An unhealthy founder would be a disaster, while a healthy founder would create goodness.

My uniqueness happens to be my ability to hold multiple extreme opinions in my heart and listen to people actively. My knowledge about Sam Altman is narrow since this was the 1st time I heard his voice. I am considering this as an advantage to provide you with the least of my prejudice.

The conference room was full of people; some were anxious about losing their jobs, while others were going through an existential crisis due to the most popular, productive & fast-growing product in human history called ChatGPT. It’s a privilege to witness someone shaping our future, and my moral responsibility to share the knowledge with those who couldn’t be there with a free mind and will.

Since the session, I have been asking myself - how I would describe Sam Altman and what motivates this human?

During the conversation, my observations make me believe that Sam Altman isn’t driven by money, power or ego. I might have a different answer for other leaders, Sam Altman felt more down-to-earth and thoughtful about the future. This means I feel good about having Sam Altman on this hot seat instead of any other leader in the world right now.

My hypothesis is validated as Sam Altman owns 0% equity in OpenAI. And he spoke clearly that his corporation isn’t incentivizing employees and founders to make more money, unlike most other corporations. Also, Sam is ensuring that OpenAI doesn’t disproportionately benefit large corporations by making the resources available to the general public more democratically and at a small cost. So all the profits from OpenAI in the long run, go to non-profits.

But then I have been asking myself, what would motivate Sam Altman beyond money, power, and ego?

This is a tricky question since I have found myself in a similar situation over these last few years; being born poor in India and experiencing the luxuries of the world in private jets and living in Hawaii, I ask myself, who am I?

I came to this realization that any more amount of money doesn’t fulfill me, but what fulfills me the most is building communities and donating a part of my salary back to my college IIT Kharagpur which brought me to where I am today.

So I ask myself, what fulfills me these days?

As human beings - I think we have a deep desire to fulfill ourselves in a couple of ways:

Having Kids helps us in passing on our genes forward fulfills us.
Leaving a legacy via consciousness and impact on the future of the human race fulfills us.

And this reminded me of the tweet of Sam Altman when Sam mentioned that the human desire to create more impact is just irreversible.

So I am convinced that what is driving Sam Altman is indeed this long-lasting impact on the human race.

And that’s where my existential crisis side kicks in.

My birth name is Shiva, and my understanding of Shiva as a transformer is that Shiva is a creator, a protector, and a destroyer. Shiva is known to destroy his creations when they don’t live up to his own expectations.

And here I find Sam Altman sitting on the seat of Shiva.

So the paradox hits me hard what would Sam Altman do when we reach the future version of GPT. Would Sam Altman kill his own baby when it would challenge his own existence as a human being? I don’t think I could predict Sam anywhere on that - all I know - is that future doesn’t look that far.

With the scale and speed at which this development is happening, where the newest version of GPT-4 can solve all the problems humans were trying to solve on the version of GPT 3 weeks ago, we are likely to be making critical decisions about our civilizations during our lifetimes.

There is already an abundance of resources on earth not to have poverty, but here we are struggling with some of the basic needs throughout the world. The gap between the rich and the poor seems to be increasing over the last many years. Technology has not helped but accelerated this gap leading to the rich getting richer and being attached to money.

So I find it hard to trust Sam Altman due to the history if the gap would decrease, if at all due to his team’s discovery of ChatGPT.

So I get this question here and there, why shouldn’t Sam Altman pause the development?

The question is easy but the answer is hard since once a discovery is made, replicating it is not that hard. LLM’s largely rely on computing power, serving as a commodity and there are many big players in the world with enough computing to remove that edge created by ChatGPT as the leader for now.

And given we all love our freedom in democracy, we haven’t been able to establish the same system throughout the world, with some countries still fighting wars. AI isn’t that hard to build for them, either. As trade secrets are out there, speed is the only key to moving us further.

So I don’t think I also favor pausing any of the discoveries either.

Now let’s get back to what it means for us?

Our world is going to see the fastest revolution in human history. It’s going to be harder than the industrial revolution.

This is not just me but Sam Altman speaking. There will be chaos and suffering. And even though there is empathy we need to acknowledge it’s not going to be easy.

The legislature and Congress have been well known to be behind in what’s coming.

And AI isn’t about one country, it goes beyond the White House as well as Wall Street.

To bring all countries together to create new AI regulations isn’t going to be easy, so I am personally concerned about World Peace.

Sam agrees that global training and deployment regulation is needed for AI. Though I would want Sam’s opinion in the regulation only a little - how can I trust the baby's dad to make better decisions for our society?

One thing I could identify from his talk is that Sam is as clueless about the future as us. Since the talk started with Sam saying that whatever I am saying might not be valid 6 months down the line, it shows the disruption the technology is going to cause.

I am going to repeat - I don’t think I would have anyone else on the hot seat.

What itched me the most - is that as a leader - Sam didn’t have a clear opinion on how the future would look like, so the people in the conference room, who were looking for reassurance of jobs or existence, didn’t get much of these reassurances either.

That was evident even from the conversations after the talk, the people were agitated by the quality of answers.

But I have to repeat myself, the accountability and transparency Sam showed haven’t been seen in the world before.

What I felt is that Sam is as clueless about the impact of the technology as we all and wanted us to be actively supporting a smooth transformation.

Sam said some good, some bad is going to happen. The change looks inevitable here; what’s more critical for us is to play in the unknown, just like Sam is doing, so that we can at least shape it for our future.

Now that I remember, someone asked Sam what we could do with the technology?

I liked his answer - that we can use all this abundance of computing to solve different problems - we can invest it for medical research or solve for energy. Countries are usually driven by economic prosperity - so it would be hard to believe - we will choose the technology for solving bigger problems on Earth.

The question comes up - about the alignment problem of AI?

This is one place where Sam was clear, that yes, this is super important and hence his team is at work which means in a way, our existence is not at complete risk. If we trust this human at all, who doesn’t look like driven by greed - would make wise choices here.

And to know Sam better, what transformed this human,

Sam mentioned regular meditations. Sam found it randomly, and it transformed Sam’s ability to question existence.

And for worried people, Sam Altman said,

There is a reason to be worried. Empathy for those who are extremely worried. Same is somewhat concerned too, but also an ultra-optimist.

This is not just a technology or a societal revolution.

AI is going to be bigger than technology. It’s a social problem that we have to solve.

Even if we slow down, it will still happen on a societal scale.

People should take pride in solving such complex problems. We need to come together and decide to enforce it.

The future is going to be better. It moved faster than OpenAI thought about it. We will debate and rustle on where we will see this go.

Maybe this will bring - one giant brain into the sky - which can be called accumulated wisdom.

And someone asked Sam how are decisions getting made at OpenAI?

Currently, they have 7 board members. Not democratic at this point but Sam desires to do it in the future.

And what’s the current impact of ChatGPT looking like?

And Sam brought up the education use case. 70% of students and teachers are using ChatGPT right now. That’s by itself a big leap for humankind.

And what does Sam think if this can happen within the capitalist framework?

Capitalism is the best system at this point. We hope we find a better system at some point. We don’t know if we will have enough time. We shouldn’t have poverty. AI can help with that, to create abundance.

Then someone asked - what will we humans do in the post-AI world?

People will have a lot of time to work on themselves

How do you control yourself at the end of the day?

Go to bed with a clean head every night

So yes, there was a question how can we help Sam?

People are using it as a life or personal coach. Or a friend or companion. Or a supporter. People are finding great value. Not sure if this is how it’s supposed to be, since, in our society, we should be thinking about that human touch.

Global conversations with all passion and hope and fear and ugliness and beauty. On how we want the future to look.

We need to have international global collaboration. The need for the global regulatory system - is very much required.

Take time to debate - on what we want to do, in the Post-AI world.

And how can we move towards One Earth!

My conclusion of the talk remains clear

Technology has together got us to this stage. And there is no real escape.

We can embrace and shape it in the direction we care.

They were talking about aliens here and there - it seems we are already there. AI must unite us all so that we can create a compassionate, empathetic relationship with AI.

Which humans haven’t been very successful in the past?

But there is my hope as an Ironman.

And yes, we need some paradigm shifts in thinking.

And detach ourselves from our identities.

Since now, it’s really about the human race, not just about your kids, it’s about our existence as one race.

Excited to discuss this further and plan out regulations around AI for the world. Reach out to me if you would like to join.

Have a beautiful day in paradise, let's live today, it’s not forever! 😘🥰💕💜