You can watch this video for a detailed history:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XyI38Vp1PGwI don't know anything about Sam Altman, and so I cannot endorse the views presented in the video. However, this channel is usually very informative with detailed research and analysis and is usually spot on with their predictions.
One aspect I find curious about this video is that the description matches a lot of the famous SV billionaires. Not all of them, but all the usual suspects. They're all either privileged by birth, or has unusual luck of being at the right place at the right time. They may or may not have some talent, but they never acknowledge their privilege and luck. They all have made some disastrous decisions in the past, but failed upwards due to their privilege. They never mention any of those.
And some among them (this is not necessarily about Altman) exhibit a very curious behavior that's like a movement or cult among them. Once they become rich and famous, they start believing that they're special compared to all the plebs out there. They oppose the social and educational programs that empowered them in the first place. Whenever they talk about 'freedom', they're talking about their freedom to do whatever they want, even to the detriment of the others. They believe that they're divinely gifted with business acumen and therefore should be the decision makers and controllers of large populations and resources (they don't like democracy). They even have clubs and literature based on this idea.
