Peter Thiel sure made a big impact on Sam Altman’s career, like, seriously. Back in 2012, after Altman sold his first startup, Thiel was all like, “Here, have some cash for your new venture fund, Hydrazine Capital.” Thiel thought Altman was, like, the epitome of a millennial tech person, you know, just soaking up that Silicon Valley vibe.
Altman would always be like, “Hey, Thiel, check out this cool startup at Y Combinator,” and Thiel would be like, “Hmm, okay, I’ll invest, even if I’m not 100% sold on the hype.” And guess what? Thiel ended up making some serious bank thanks to Altman’s picks.
But Thiel, he was all about criticizing the lack of real tech progress, especially in a Stanford lecture where he was like, “We’re still stuck in traffic, forget about flying cars.” Altman, taking a page from Thiel’s book, decided to shake things up at Y Combinator by focusing on hard tech projects like nuclear energy and AI.
Now, here’s where it gets interesting. Eliezer Yudkowsky, this AI-obsessed autodidact, had a huge influence on Thiel’s early AI investments. Yudkowsky was all about accelerating the singularity, rallying investors and researchers around the idea. He even introduced Thiel to the folks at DeepMind, one of Thiel’s first AI investments.
Thiel and Yudkowsky’s collaboration set the stage for the AI revolution, inspiring Altman to get in on the action. Yudkowsky’s ideas on friendly AI and existential risks really got people thinking about the potential dangers of superintelligence.
Fast forward to Altman teaming up with Musk to create OpenAI, and you’ve got a full-on race to build artificial general intelligence. Yudkowsky, still preaching caution, warned that the current wave of AI research could lead to, well, the end of the world. Thiel, feeling guilty for what he started, was like, “Uh oh, Eliezer has brainwashed half of OpenAI.”
It’s all a bit of a wild ride, with Thiel, Altman, Yudkowsky, and Musk all playing their parts in the AI drama. But hey, that’s tech for you, always keeping us on our toes with the next big thing (or the next big disaster, who knows).