Sam Altman wants global AI coalition
OpenAI CEO was in UAE to explore support for massive, costly infrastructure
Altman also hosted hundreds of Fortune 500 company executives this month, pitching AI services for corporate use, including ChatGPT Enterprise.
OpenAI Chief Executive Officer Sam Altman has been working to build a country-led coalition needed to develop artificial intelligence (AI) technology worldwide, while also pitching AI services for corporate use to global industry giants, multiple agencies reported recently.
According to Bloomberg, Altman has been working to build a global coalition to support boosting the supply of chips, energy and data centre capacity, citing multiple people familiar with the discussions.
He met with investors in the UAE last week to discuss how the private sector can work with countries to support costly, large-scale infrastructure for AI, sources told Bloomberg, who requested anonymity to share private discussions.
Altman has also spoken with officials in a number of Western countries and is holding meetings in Washington later this week, one of the people said. It’s not yet clear what form this effort will take. The meetings mark Altman’s latest attempt to address concerns that the supply of chips and other key infrastructure won’t be able to keep pace with the rapid deployment of AI.
ChatGPT for corporates
Altman also hosted hundreds of Fortune 500 company executives in San Francisco, New York and London this month where he and other OpenAI executives pitched AI services for corporate use, going head to head in some cases with financial backer Microsoft,
attendees told Reuters. The roadshow-like events illustrate how the company credited with sparking the explosion of generative artificial intelligence with its consumer offering, is looking to grow new sources of revenue from corporates all over the world — some of it potentially on the home turf of its biggest partner.
Three meetings with senior corporate executives included two in the US last week and one in London on Monday.
Product demonstrations
At each event, Altman and chief operating officer Brad Lightcap offered product demonstrations, including ChatGPT Enterprise, the enterprise grade of its famous chatbot that generates text from simple prompts, software to connect customer applications to its AI services known as APIs, and its new text-to-video models.
Some executives in the audience at the events asked why they should pay for ChatGPT Enterprise if they are already customers of Microsoft, attendees said.
Altman and Lightcap responded that paying for the enterprise service allowed them to work with the OpenAI team directly, have access to the latest models and more opportunity to get customised AI products, according to attendees present.