Title: I&#x27;m constantly surprised by the fact that Sam Altman is the one in charge of OpenAI.  As far as I know, he dropped out of college to start a company that folded (Edit: this is wrong, he sold it, was a bust for investors though), ended up advising companies at YCombinator, Paul G liked him, and he just sort of made lots of connections. Then he became CEO of Open AI?  I&#x27;m likely missing a step, right?<p>Don&#x27;t get me wrong, I don&#x27;t think he&#x27;s a moron or anything, but it&#x27;s <i>fascinating</i> to me that he doesn&#x27;t have ANY of the following things that I&#x27;d assume makes one qualified:
* Published AI research
* Sold a company
* Worked at a Unicorn or top tech company
* Reputation in OSS as a hacker&#x2F;builder<p>Surely there&#x27;s more to the story? Do people who he has advised at YCombinator all agree he&#x27;s brilliant and insightful?  What am I missing?<p>EDIT: I was wrong, he did sell a company.  My mistake!<p>That does change things, but I&#x27;d like to hear more from people who have good things to say about him.  Maybe he&#x27;s given some amazing advice to really important companies that we&#x27;re unaware of.  It would be nice to hear more of how he got his reputation.
Upvote: