https://time.com/6342827/ceo-of-the-year-2023-sam-altman/
Quote form Time article:
"Altman’s pursuit of fusion hints at the staggering scope of his ambition. He’s put $180 million into Retro Biosciences, a longevity startup hoping to add 10 healthy years to the human life-span. He conceived of and helped found Worldcoin, a biometric-identification system with a crypto-currency attached, which has raised hundreds of millions of dollars. Through OpenAI, Altman has spent $10 million seeding the longest-running study into universal basic income (UBI) anywhere in the U.S., which has distributed more than $40 million to 3,000 participants, and is set to deliver its first set of findings in 2024. Altman’s interest in UBI speaks to the economic dislocation that he expects AI to bring—though he says it’s not a “sufficient solution to the problem in any way.”
"The entrepreneur was so alarmed at America’s direction under Donald Trump that in 2017 he explored running for governor of California. Today Altman downplays the endeavor as “a very lightweight consideration.” But Matt Krisiloff, a senior aide to Altman at the time, says they spent six months setting up focus groups across the state to help refine a political platform. “It wasn’t just a totally flippant idea,” Krisiloff says. Altman published a 10-point policy platform, which he dubbed the United Slate, with goals that included lowering housing costs, Medicare for All, tax reform, and ambitious clean-energy targets. He ultimately passed on a career switch. “It was so clear to me that I was much better suited to work on AI,” Altman says, “and that if we were able to succeed, it would be a much more interesting and impactful thing for me to do.
But he remains keenly interested in politics. Altman’s beliefs are shaped by the theories of late 19th century political economist Henry George, who combined a belief in the power of market incentives to deliver increasing prosperity with a disdain for those who speculate on scarce assets, like land, instead of investing their capital in human progress. Altman has advocated for a land-value tax—a classic Georgist policy—in recent meetings with world leaders, he says."