Sam Altman is now one of the most recognizable names in tech. But despite the OpenAI CEO’s success, one of his former teachers said he’d hoped Altman wouldn’t work in that field.
Andy Abbott, his high-school English teacher, told Bloomberg in a piece published Thursday that Altman was “so creative.” Describing him as “truly exceptional,” Abbot said he’d hoped Altman would end up as “an author or something like that.”
“I remember thinking — and this is an embarrassing confession — I hope he doesn’t go into technology,” Abbott told Bloomberg. Altman attended John Burroughs School, a private school in St. Louis that he later became a donor at, the report said. Abbott has since become head of the school.
To some, Altman’s career path is creative. The CEO has been at the forefront of artificial-intelligence innovation and the emergence of AI chatbots, reshaping everyday life. OpenAI most recently introduced its latest version of ChatGPT powered by GPT-4o, which can have human-like conversations and reason across audio, vision, and text.
The teacher described Altman to Bloomberg as a renaissance teen who edited the yearbook, played water polo, built the school’s website, and competed in Model United Nations.
“Everyone knew that this guy’s better at most things than most of us are,” Abbott said.
Bloomberg also reported that Altman displayed high confidence from a young age. In one instance, students wanted to boycott a school assembly about homosexuality, and Altman stood up in front of the entire student body and announced he was gay, the report said.
The startup founder John Coogan, who crossed paths with Altman while the latter was running Y Combinator, told Bloomberg that Altman’s talents included listening and diagnosing problems. An unidentified acquaintance of Altman’s also said in the report that the CEO excelled at dazzling people who could help him.
Altman’s high level of confidence and self-assurance is still evident — he previously said he nonchalantly texted world leaders during his brief ousting from OpenAI — and he has built his career on convincing people to take a chance on what he believes in.
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