Sam Altman: AI helps ‘change the role’ of the person with the idea

“Before AI, many people in Silicon Valley often laughed and joked when someone had an idea that sounded groundbreaking, but lacked the technical expertise to turn the vision into reality,” Sam Altman said at the Stripe Sessions event in San Francisco (USA) on April 30.

Altman, who once led Y Combinator (YC), a famous startup incubator in Silicon Valley, before becoming CEO of OpenAI, believes that since AI, technical capacity is no longer as important as before. Instead, new ideas are what create breakthroughs.

According to Altman, there are people who want to start a company and they often say, ‘I have a great idea.’ ‘I won’t tell anyone what it is.’ ‘I have the best idea’. ‘I just need a programmer to build it for me and then I’ll be a huge success’… “And every time we did, we used to make fun of those people. “And then suddenly, AI made it look like revenge from the people who created the idea,” Altman said.

Altman explains that, for a long time, the most important factor that he, YC and the entire technology industry looked for in a founding team was technical talent. Now, that’s still important, but he said he wants to invest in people who really understand users deeply, without having to know programming. “It’s a big change,” he emphasized.

Although OpenAI and ChatGPT made Altman famous, his initial wealth now comes mainly from investments in Reddit, Stripe and Airbnb, according to Business Insider. To date, he continues to be an active investor in startups, even while running OpenAI.

Referring to the fact that many potential investors want to stay on the sidelines to watch the development of AI, Altman said that is the wrong step. “I think to do anything now with a 10-year perspective requires us to really suspend disbelief,” he added.

Earlier this year, Altman also said that OpenAI is looking for employees who do not need a technical background, but must have “taste”. Writing in

Theo Fortunea number of other technology tycoons, including Paul Graham, co-founder of Y-Combinator, also agreed with the above view. Graham was one of the first to comment on the importance of this quality. As far back as 2002, he asserted that “taste” is not objective and that “good taste is needed to create good things” in an essay. Dane Knecht, Cloudflare Chief Technology Officer, also affirmed that taste will be the factor that makes a difference in the technical field this year and in the future.