Sam Altman paced the stage calm and confident, ready in black jeans and Lego x Adidas sneakers to sell himself as the next Steve Jobs — or at least this year’s Mark Zuckerberg. The OpenAI founder had gathered about 1,000 software engineers and AI researchers into a former Honda dealership in downtown San Francisco for an event that signaled his company’s ascent into the Silicon Valley pantheon. Green velvet couches and lush house plants lined the halls. The boba bar was unlimited. Trays of avocado toast on sourdough were constantly replenished. Those who couldn’t score a ticket signed up for “watch parties,” streaming the event with friends. The sense of possibility was palpable. “This energy is awesome,” Altman said with a grin, as he took the stage. The tech company keynote was made famous by Jobs, who used it to announce the first iPod, and, years later, the first iPhone. Delivered in a signature black turtleneck, his presentations helped fuel the frenzy around Apple’s iconic devices — his infamous “reality distortion field” that made Apple into one of the most lucrative gatekeepers in business history. Now Altman was using the same playbook to reinforce OpenAI’s dominance. Launched as a nonprofit in 2015, OpenAI was created in large part to keep advanced artificial intelligence out of the hands of monopolistic corporations. But since accepting a major investment from Microsoft in 2019, the company has transitioned to a novel for-profit structure.
Full story : How Sam Altman is pushing OpenAI into the ‘Big Tech’ pantheon.
