Parmy Olson, Columnist

Sam Altman Is Spreading Himself Too Thin

Even for a tech billionaire in Silicon Valley, the chief executive of OpenAI seems to be taking on too much.

September 24, 2024 at 5:21 PM UTC

Parmy Olson is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering technology. A former reporter for the Wall Street Journal and Forbes, she is author of “Supremacy: AI, ChatGPT and the Race That Will Change the World.”

Sam Altman speaks at the Advancing Sustainable Development through Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy AI Event in New York.
Photographer: BRYAN R. SMITH/AFP

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Are you really a technology billionaire if you’re not multitasking in a way that would send most mortals toward a nervous breakdown?

Sam Altman has his hands in countless projects while also building “mankind’s last invention”: artificial general intelligence, or AI systems that surpass our own cognitive abilities. These galactic aspirations were reinforced on Monday when Altman published a dramatic blog post reminding us that superintelligence will bring prosperity for everyone. It’s just a “few thousand days” away, he added.