{"product_id":"optimist-sam-altman-openai-and-the-race-to-inve","title":"Optimist: Sam Altman, OpenAI, and the Race to Inve","description":"\u003cp\u003eOn November 30, 2022, OpenAI released ChatGPT, a chatbot that captivated the world with its uncanny ability to hold humanlike conversations. Not even a year later, on November 17, 2023, Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, was summarily fired on a video call by the company's board. The firing made headlines around the globe: OpenAI is the leader in the race to build AGI--artificial general intelligence, or AI that can think like a human being--and Altman is the most prominent figure in the field. Yet it was mere days before Altman was back running the company he had co-founded, with most of the directors who voted to fire him themselves removed from the board.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe episode was a demonstration of how quickly the industry is moving, and of Altman's power to bend reality to his will. In \u003cem\u003eThe Optimist\u003c\/em\u003e, the \u003cem\u003eWall Street Journal\u003c\/em\u003e reporter Keach Hagey presents the most detailed account yet of Altman's rise, from his precocious childhood in St. Louis to his first, failed startup experience; his time as legendary entrepreneur Paul Graham's protégé and successor as head of Y Combinator, the start-up accelerator where Altman became the premier power broker in Silicon Valley; the founding of OpenAI and his recruitment of a small yet superior team; and his struggle to keep his company at the cutting edge while fending off determined rivals, including Elon Musk, a former friend and now Altman's bitter opponent.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eHagey conducted more than 250 interviews, with Altman's family, friends, teachers, mentors, co-founders, colleagues, investors, and portfolio companies, in addition to spending hours with Altman himself. The person who emerges in her portrait is a brilliant dealmaker with a love of risk, who believes in technological progress with an almost religious conviction--yet who sometimes moves too fast for the people around him. With both the promise and peril of AI increasing by the day, Hagey delivers a nuanced, balanced, revelatory account of the individual who is leading us into what he himself has called the intelligence age.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAltman is a figure out of Isaac Asimov or Neal Stephenson. Or he is the author himself: if it feels as though we have all collectively stepped into a science fiction short story, it is Altman who is writing it.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Phoenix Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46610359746729,"sku":"PHBK-9781324075967","price":31.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0578\/9899\/1785\/files\/content_2a2afd6e-4a3b-4b90-ac1c-54bea41086af.jpg?v=1764816777","url":"https:\/\/myti.com\/products\/optimist-sam-altman-openai-and-the-race-to-inve","provider":"Myti","version":"1.0","type":"link"}