Insider says Sam Altman’s AI world tour was a success

• Sam Altman is a man on a mission to sell the world with AI.
• The head of OpenAI completed a mission-like world tour earlier this month.
• Speaking to people who met or saw Altman on tour, insiders said the CEO was a compelling preacher.

Sam Altman knows he’s at a tipping point.

Speaking at a hearth in Seoul, South Korea on June 9, the OpenAI CEO admitted he was on a “diplomatic mission.”

It’s akin to a religious mission, and recent examples of Altman and his team traveling to 16 countries in three months include: Israel, Jordan, Qatar, UAE, India, South Korea.

In Tel Aviv, as OpenAI commanders attended a dinner with a group of technologists and entrepreneurs dubbed the “Templar of Innovation,” Altman prepared to meet with the country’s president, Isaac Herzog. was doing He also met with India’s Narendra Modi, South Korea’s Yoon Seok-yeol, France’s Emmanuel Macron, Britain’s Rishi Snak and other leading MPs.

It’s a reception more fitting for a world leader than a startup CEO. But Altman knows he’s a man of the hour. ChatGPT ushered in a new AI era that leaders are desperate to understand. This is a crossroads moment that will decide what is politically best: whether to encourage AI through funding and a friendly regulatory regime, or to regulate it and forget it.

OpenAI’s goal is to cement the future importance of AI for humanity. According to people who were there during Altman’s tour, he achieved his original goal.

OpenAI declined to comment on the matter.

Proposition 1: Join or be excluded from the AI ​​revolution

Altman’s sales pitch rests on two central pillars. First: AI works only with user interaction. Second: AI is inevitable, so let’s introduce it before it’s too late.

During a pit stop in Delhi, Altman’s audience heard how tools like ChatGPT could adapt to “a country of languages ​​like India,” said Vashal Gupta, founder of AI startup Dubverse. said Mr.

This could be a smart way to overcome India’s wariness of US tech companies.

Although India has over 100 languages ​​and quite a few dialects, the common language is still English. The country has suffered a brain drain for years as technical and mathematical talent flowed to the United States, as evidenced by the Indian-born CEOs of Google and Microsoft. Under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, India has taken a more nationalist approach to technology and remains wary of sharing its citizens’ data with US companies.

Moreover, by replacing human customer sales representatives with chatbots, AI poses a potential risk to India’s outsourcing economy, which dominates the IT sector and accounts for 8% of the country’s GDP.

Gupta said OpenAI’s underlying AI model, GPT, needs to be trained on a tank of foreign language data. As it stands, the majority of the data that GPT trains on is in English.

“The Indian government will have a ton of data that doesn’t exist on the internet, and OpenAI won’t be able to access it,” Gupta said. “Maybe that’s why Sam is interested in entering into some sort of high-level partnership to get the data so he can make something for India or have it custom made. I can’t.”

Proposal 2: This is the Next Internet

In Seoul, the head of OpenAI argued that survival should not be the focus at a time when humanity is “entering the greatest era of human potential, technological development and economic growth” thanks to AI.

For Dovi Frances, a US-Israeli venture capitalist and founding partner of Group 11 who met with OpenAI, that was already clear. He believes no country can afford to ignore an app like ChatGPT.

“If we have the highest level of artificial intelligence, if we have a workforce that is skilled at it … we will be competitive in 2030,” he said.

After seeing OpenAI in Doha, Droobi Health CEO Jacob Mathieu recalled a “memorable exchange” during a panel discussion at the Qatar National Library where high school students asked about the role ChatGPT could play in diplomacy.

What’s your reaction? “Sam said he didn’t know and he asked the student to teach him in 10 years,” Matthew said.

Altman’s approach has worked well both in winning public opinion and in tangibly influencing policy, despite warnings about AI’s harm to the labor market and misinformation. Time reported earlier this month that OpenAI had successfully persuaded the European Union to water down the rules governing ChatGPT in EU AI law.

Elias Verfaul, director of policy development and partnerships at Qatar’s education foundation WISE, said Altman was “really committed to raising awareness” of AI by hosting a panel discussion with him. said he feels

“He’s humbled by the fact that they’ve created something much bigger than they are,” Verfowl said. “There are serious efforts to expand the conversation.”

Altman seems to set the tone of the conversation.

But so far he seems to have earned the trust of the people. Or, as Verfowl puts it, “First impressions are positive. I hope I’m not wrong about this.”