The Optimist by Keach Hagey review – inside the mind of the man who brought us ChatGPT

Sam Altman’s extraordinary career – and personal life – under the microscope

On 30 November 2022, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman tweeted the following, characteristically reserving the use of capital letters for& his product’s name: “today we launched ChatGPT. try talking with it here: chat.openai.com”. In a reply to himself immediately below, he added: “language interfaces are going to be a& big deal, i think”.

If Altman was aiming for understatement, he succeeded. ChatGPT became the fastest web service to hit 1 million users, but more than that, it fired the starting& gun on the AI wars currently consuming big tech. Everything is about to change beyond recognition, we keep being told, though no one can& agree on whether that will be for good or ill.