Despite its global fame and borderline scary technology, OpenAI wasn’t always the multi-billion-dollar giant it is today. During a Y Combinator event, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman candidly described the organization's early challenges: "We had no ideas for products, no revenue, no real idea that we were ever going to have revenue. The idea of ChatGPT was completely in the realm of science fiction."
This admission highlights the profound skepticism surrounding artificial general intelligence (AGI) in OpenAI's formative years. Altman emphasized that the team spent 2015 brainstorming research papers and experimental projects like video game AI or robotic hands, with ChatGPT's future seeming as improbable as science fiction.
