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Sam Altman

This Month

Sam Altman has called a code red as OpenAI’s rivals like Anthropic take market share.

The world’s AI giants are racing to lock in Australia’s big banks

From OpenAI to Anthropic, the country’s top financial institutions are trying to work out how to engage with them, and where to spend their sizeable budgets.

NextDC chief executive Craig Scroggie and OpenAI chief strategy officer Jason Kwon at a NextDC data centre.

OpenAI becomes major tenant in $7b data centre deal

The ChatGPT maker has made its first big commitment to AI infrastructure in Australia with an agreement to occupy the biggest in the southern hemisphere.

November

One of the AI giants will lose (huge). But investors don’t need to

As long as you’re not betting on one particular company or one particular debt offering, relax and enjoy the ride.

OpenAI

What happens when OpenAI tweaks ChatGPT’s personality

In making its chatbot appeal to more people, OpenAI made it riskier. Now the company has made its chatbot safer. Will that undermine its quest for growth?

October

Just how far could OpenAI take its investment banking push? The question is starting to be kicked around in some of Australia’s top boardrooms, who are trying to peer decades into the future.

AI investment bankers show the threat to your business model

Having trained a chatbot to do the work of junior bankers, could OpenAI, with some assistance and deep pockets, potentially start its own investment bank?

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OpenAI head of global affairs, Chris Lehane.

OpenAI courts Australia in its $771b global infrastructure push

The deal whisperer for Sam Altman’s OpenAI has arrived down under as the tech giant looks to strike deals, but there may be some hoops to jump through along the way.

OpenAI’s chief executive is showing little concern about the scale of the spending that lies ahead – even though his company’s revenue is dwarfed by the $US1 trillion of investment it is planning in computing power.

Is Sam Altman at the centre of an AI building bubble?

The company behind ChatGPT has signed agreements with many of the largest tech groups, adding to a growing web of financial dependencies across the AI world.

Sam Altman has done another big deal in which no one knows where the cash is coming from.

ChatGPT maker’s $2.3trn spending spree is genius – or a house of cards

Sam Altman has convinced Broadcom, AMD and Nvidia to agree to give him the world’s most valuable computer chips without knowing where the money will come from.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said that his company has been working with Broadcom for 18 months.

OpenAI, Broadcom sign 10-gigawatt pact for chips, networking

OpenAI will design the hardware and work with Broadcom to develop it, with racks of servers containing the gear to be deployed in the second half of 2026.

Affinda Group’s Tim and Ben Toner have acquired Dawid Naude’s AI training business Pathfindr.

Two Melbourne AI companies become one in $15 million buyout

Artificial intelligence software company Affinda Group is buying out AI training firm Pathfindr in its first acquisition.

OpenAI signs multibillion-dollar deal with chipmaker AMD

Deal marks the second big chipmaking partnership for OpenAI after a previous $US100 billion deal with Nvidia, as the AI startup builds out more computing capacity.

An AI-generated image from OpenAI’s Sora app depicts New York Times journalist Mike Isaac in a Matrix-style duel against Ronald McDonald, using cheeseburgers as weapons.

OpenAI’s new video app is jaw-dropping (and alarming)

Sure, using Sora to create a “Matrix”-style duel against Ronald McDonald is fun. But the ability to quickly generate video likenesses of people could turbocharge misinformation.

September

Musk has regularly warned about the risks of this so-called “singularity” event

Will AI usher in a new era for humanity or extinction?

Tech leaders agree AI super-intelligence will transform our lives. But their visions range from enhanced human consciousness to AI-built bioweapons wiping us out.

Eliezer Yudkowsky, center, at a conference in Berkeley, Calif., in 2023. He has spent years worrying about the safety of artificial intelligence.

AI’s prophet of doom wants to shut it all down

Eliezer Yudkowsky has spent the past 20 years warning artificial intelligence insiders of danger. Now, he’s making his case to the public.

There are risks in using generative AI tools that tell you how great you are all the time, experts say.

ChatGPT is like a puppy dog. It’s reared to please you – but beware

The human-like qualities of artificial intelligence tools are what make the technology transformative, but their flattery will get you nowhere say experts.

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Businesses are being promised an army of AI bot workers, but many companies are selling hype rather than reality.

Can a toothbrush really be powered by AI? How about a washing machine?

The corporate world is going mad for AI agents, but there are growing concerns about AI washing, where vendor promises of bot capabilities don’t match reality.

August

AFR CHATgpt Anxiety

OpenAI agrees to change ChatGPT after teenager’s suicide

The artificial intelligence company said that it will update its popular chatbot to better respond to people with mental distress following a lawsuit.

Sam Altman

AI doubters are having a moment. Even Sam Altman agrees

Critics are questioning if the artificial intelligence bubble is about to pop and why on earth we are allowing it to do what it’s doing to us.

Over the past three years, AI researchers, users and investors have become accustomed to a breakneck pace of improvement. That may be over.

The question suddenly sweeping through Silicon Valley

OpenAI’s underwhelming new GPT-5 model suggests progress is slowing – and competition is changing. Everyone is asking: what if this is as good as it gets?

OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman and CBA CEO Matt Comyn want to use AI to reduce fraud.

OpenAI inks deal with Commonwealth Bank

OpenAI and CBA will work together on artificial intelligence-backed services around fraud detection, customers and employees.

Original URL: https://www.afr.com/person/samuel-harris-altman-6g17