Anyone paying attention should have zero trust in what Sam Altman says.
I don’t buy the logic that he will “scam” his investors and run away at some point.
If OpenAI goes down tomorrow, he will be just fine. His incentive is to sell the stock, not actually build and run a profitable business.
Look at Adam Neumann as an example of how to lose billions of investor dollars and still walk out of the ensuing crash with over a billion.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Neumann
His strategy is to sell OpenAI stock like it was Bitcoin in 2020, and if for some reason the market decides that maybe a company that loses large amounts of cash isn't actually a good investment... he'll be fine, he's had plenty of time to turn some of his stock into money :)
I guess if other people buying stock in your company is what enables you to have a super high salary (+ benefits like company plane, etc), you are still kinda selling stock though, and honestly, having considered the "start a random software company aligned with the present trend (so ~2015 DevOps/Cloud, 2020 cryptocurrency/blockchain, 2024 AI/ML), pay myself a million dollar a year salary and close shop after 5 years because 'no market lol'" route to riches myself, I still wouldn't consider Altman to be completely free of perverse incentives here :)
Still, very glad you pointed that out, thanks for sharing that information ^^
Yes, but two paths to doing that are to a) build a profitable company, and b) accumulate personal wealth and walk away from a non-profitable company.
I'm not saying OpenAI is unprofitable, but nor do I see Altman as the sort who'd rule out option b.