OpenAI’s newest AI model, GPT-4o, has been out for less than a week, and people can use it for everything from providing translations in real time to quite literally reading the room to answer questions based on physical surroundings.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is one of the biggest names in the artificial-intelligence industry. This makes him pretty recognizable in San Francisco — too much so for his liking.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has also found it helpful in another way, as he outlined during an episode of the podcast The Logan Bartlett Show published Tuesday. During an episode of the podcast “The Logan Bartlett Show,” Altman shared his experience with the constant public recognition.
The OpenAI CEO reflected on the privacy and anonymity he’d lost as a result of his job during an episode of the podcast “The Logan Bartlett Show” published Tuesday.
“The inability to just be mostly anonymous in public is very, very strange,” he confessed. “It’s like a much weirder thing than it sounds like… It’s a strangely isolating way to live.”Altman, who has mostly run OpenAI since 2019, also spoke on the podcast about how becoming one of tech’s most recognizable figures, has cost him his privacy around San Francisco, saying he can no longer dine out in public in the city.
He continued: “I was like, ‘AI’s going to be really important, OpenAI’s going to be a really important company.’ I didn’t think I would not be able to go out to dinner in my own city.”
Though OpenAI has shone a bigger spotlight on Altman, he was far from anonymous in Silicon Valley before. He was president of the startup accelerator Y Combinator for several years before taking the helm at OpenAI in 2019.
“The inability to just be mostly anonymous in public is very, very strange,” he said on the Logan Bartlett Show this week. “It’s like a much weirder thing. It’s a strangely isolating way to live.”
Because yes, Sam, the one thing that’ll cool off all this Altman Fever is definitely an appearance on a hit podcast that immediately racked up a third of a million views.
Amid these technological discussions, Altman opened up about the personal challenges he faces due to increased media and public attention. He admitted that he hadn’t fully anticipated the loss of privacy that came with his professional success.
Sam Altman says he can’t go out to eat in public anymore in San Francisco: ‘It’s a strangely isolating way to live’
Later in the podcast episode, Altman discussed his dramatic ousting from OpenAI last year. He said he was living in an “adrenaline-charged state” and didn’t eat or sleep much during that time.
Altman was fired in mid-November after OpenAI’s board announced that a “deliberate review process” had shown he was “not consistently candid in his communications with the board.” He was brought back less than a week later, and the board has since changed.
