THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ALTMAN
... as we bask in the radiant glow of Sam Altman’s latest prophecy: AGI is right around the corner, chomping at the bit to liberate us from menial tasks like breathing and tying our shoes...
Gather ’round, fellow armchair futurists, as we bask in the radiant glow of Sam Altman’s latest prophecy: AGI is right around the corner, chomping at the bit to liberate us from menial tasks like breathing and tying our shoes. Yes, according to our fearless leader, a motley crew of die-hard insiders once decided, “Let’s bet the fate of humanity on a pipedream, and hey, 99% of the world thought we were lunatics!” Nothing says “solid decision-making” like a roomful of over-caffeinated visionaries staring each other down and chanting “AGI or bust!” until someone posted the venture-funding term sheet.
Let’s rewind to the good ol’ days when OpenAI comprised eight people playing video games, a Rubik’s-cube-struggling robot hand, and zero revenue. You know, classic startup MVP stuff. They “leaned into doubt” by scribbling on whiteboards, because if NASA planned moon missions that way, we’d be living in cardboard boxes on the Sea of Tranquility. Apparently, scrappy underfunded desperation is the secret sauce that turns dreams of superintelligence into bankable unicorns. Who needs product-market fit when you can attach “emergent behaviors” to a press release?
Casting about for talent, Sam revealed that 1% of the world “resonated” with this mad quest, and conveniently, those were the only 1% of geniuses who weren’t blissfully employed at DeepMind or Stanford. Poof! Talent concentration achieved. Never mind that op-eds championing AI safety suddenly read like recruitment flyers, “Join us, or be left in the analog dust!” Because there’s nothing more motivating than peer pressure and FOMO.
And if you thought those budget-shredding early prototypes were something, buckle up: “Last week our API was five times more expensive than this week!” he boasted. Translation: We printed money, but we’ll make you feel warm and fuzzy by slashing prices, just don’t look too closely at the line item labeled “compute bills.” Meanwhile, the open-source juggernaut is “better than you’re hoping for,” which is deeply reassuring when your hopes were calibrated to “works without hallucinating.”
Ah, the much-vaunted memory feature, because what every harried commuter needs is an AI babysitter rummaging through their email, calendar, and search history, then proactively clipping coupons for existential dread. “It feels like talking to someone who knows me,” gushed Sam, blissfully ignoring the small detail that sometimes it’s preferable to remain blissfully misunderstood.
But wait, there’s more! Sign up for the premium tier, and you’ll receive, drumroll, a free humanoid robot. That’s right, folks: your personal steel butler, guaranteed to automate your chores and maybe, just maybe, your job. And if you thought building a billion of these bipedal wonders was a stretch, rest assured the supply-chain apocalypse is just a few firmware updates away. Because why conquer one industry at a time when you can simultaneously overheat the planet and manufacture your own obsolescence?
In true startup gospel, Sam reminds us that “when the industry’s clock cycle changes this much, startups almost always win.” Ignore the minor detail that most startups flame out before lunch; what matters is that you iterate faster than Big Tech, even if you’re iterating in circles. And if someone asks about defensibility, just quip, “We had the only product on the market!”, a strategy as bulletproof as a chocolate umbrella.
Finally, let us bask in Sam’s ultimate axiom: “Dream big, put one dumb foot in front of the other, and don’t listen to Elon’s mean emails.” Because if a billionaire tweets you’re doomed, that is obviously your exact cue to sprint for the finish line. In just 10 or 20 years, we’ll reportedly have “unimaginable superintelligence,” at which point the real fun begins: uploading our brains, downloading our regrets, and wondering whether we accidentally asked for Skynet instead of Siri.
So there you have it: the gospel according to Altman, served with a side of techno-utopian elixir and a dash of financial risk. Now slam that “Apply” button, polish your manifesto, and by all means, start drafting that blog post titled “How I Built AGI in My Garage.” After all, in the world of AI hype, reality is just another bug waiting to be patched.