[opdahl]

I think it's quite a stretch to say he was "powerful". Sure he had some influence but he was never on anyone's list of _somebodies_ in Silicon Valley. My personal opinion is that he really really really wants to be seen as a Steve Jobs / Elon Musk type character and he saw OpenAI as a great opportunity since he didn't have any of his own ideas.

[ah765]

He was powerful enough to get put on the board of OpenAI. But I agree that he wants to be a "great" person, above Steve Jobs and Musk and the rest, and he sees AGI as the path to get there. He's not really altruistic, but he's also not purely money-oriented as the original comment seemed to suggest.

[visarga]

Steve was his role model as a child. Says so on his wikipedia page.