OpenAI is an AI lab with an ambitious goal: to develop artificial general intelligence, or AGI—a hypothetical version of AI that can perform any intellectual task a human can, far better and far faster.
Its backers included titans of industry like Sam Altman, Elon Musk, and Greg Brockman, and for a while, its staff consisted partly of engineers poached from Musk’s former company, Tesla.
Its mission was to build AGI that was aligned with human values and to ensure that its economic benefits were shared by all.
But a curtain of secrecy fell over its activities, and its aggressive pursuit of AGI, which involved hoovering up massive amounts of data and sucking up energy, led to questions about its environmental impact and its impact on society as a whole.
This book excerpt is the story of how it all began.