This superhero narrative is the secret driving force behind almost every book beloved by Silicon Valley entrepreneurs. Travis Kalanick, founder of Uber, was a devotee of Ayn Rand, whose heroes are at war with society. Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, was a childhood fan of “Star Trek,” where Captain Kirk made all the decisions and took charge of each landing party. Peter Thiel, the venture capitalist who backed Donald J. Trump in 2016, loves “The Lord of the Rings,” an epic story in which a handful of heroes save the world. Mr. Thiel’s corporate names (Palantir, Mithril, Valar) are taken from history.
Altman, it must be acknowledged, has supported an extensive reading list that goes beyond the books written by his friends in Silicon Valley, like Thiel. He recommended another Valley favorite, Isaac Asimov’s sci-fi series “Foundation,” which is once again about how a charismatic, farsighted sage and his mostly male acolytes can save everyone, in this case 25 million planets.
But the path to becoming a real-life Gandalf or Captain Picard is fraught with danger.
Elizabeth Holmes of Theranos was inspired by Mr. Jobs. When she couldn’t get her blood testing technology to work, she simply pretended it worked. Adam Neumann promised to reinvent the office experience with WeWork. He declared bankruptcy two weeks ago, although Neumann managed to get rich. Sam Bankman-Fried, the bright promise of cryptocurrencies, will be sentenced in March for fraud. Elon Musk hasn’t helped his reputation or his bank account by buying Twitter, now called X.
For Altman, last weekend may have been a personal peak. For all the talk about ai taking over jobs, he suddenly became the only essential person in all of technology. TO publish in X by Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google, captured some of the mood, and never mind that Google is in fierce competition with OpenAI:
“Sam Altman is a hero to me. He built a company from nothing to a value of $90 billion and changed our collective world forever. I can’t wait to see what he does next. I and billions of people will benefit from his future work; It will be just incredible.”
This is Jobs-level praise. Perhaps wisely, Altman spurned all the offers he was receiving to fund his next startup. Microsoft, the largest investor in OpenAI, announced Sunday night that it would go there. Now he will work for others.
