- OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said he “stalked” Ilya Sutskever to convince him to join in his quest to build an artificial general intelligence, which many others were hesitant to do at the time.
Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, reportedly hunted down cofounder Ilya Sutskever in 2014, persuading him to join in building what would eventually become the foundation for OpenAI, the artificial intelligence startup that’s currently valued around $157 billion.
During the company’s infancy, Altman recalls pursuing artificial general intelligence was “cancelable,” carrying potentially career-ruining consequences.
“It’s impossible to overstate how nonmainstream AGI was in 2014,” Altman told Bloomberg in an interview. “People were afraid to talk to me, because I was saying I wanted to start an AGI effort.”
While the idea has yet to fully come to fruition, AGI refers to the level of artificial intelligence on par with a human’s level of understanding, perception, and cognitive ability. (Currently, OpenAI has not reached this level of complexity—yet.)
As Altman searched for partners to create the AGI platform, Ilya Sutskever was a recurring referral. OpenAI’s soon-to-be chief scientist had contributed to major advancements in AI with AlexNet, a computer program that essentially pioneered progression in the industry. The program was able to decipher objects more accurately than any non-human entity had before.
At a conference, Altman said he “stalked” Sutskever, eventually catching him in a hallway to pitch his idea. The two agreed to meet for dinner, planting the seed regarding structure for the formerly not-for-profit organization.
The company continued to progress: In 2019, it restructured its non-profit outfit into a for-profit business and debuted its first rendition of ChatGPT in November 2022. Speculation arose internally about Altman’s launch of the program, which some believed to be premature.
“I don’t make a lot of ‘we’re gonna do this thing’ decisions, but this was one of them,” he told Bloomberg.
Internal tensions came to a head in November 2023, when OpenAI’s board voted to abruptly fire the CEO for communication issues. After many of the company’s employees threatened to quit, and its president Greg Brockman quit in protest, OpenAI rehired Altman.
Sutskever, notably, was among the board members calling for Altman’s termination.
While Sutskever has never publicly spoken on his disagreements with Altman, ultimately, he left the organization in May 2024 to start Safe Superintelligence, an AI safety company. Just three months after its founding, Sutskever and company raised $1 billion in cash, giving the nascent startup a $3 billion valuation.