AISam Altman's year of textbooks and open-ended learning
a16z shared excerpts from a November 2018 conversation in which Altman described exploring AI, nuclear engineering, synthetic biology and investing without knowing how those interests would come together.
TLDR
a16z describes a year Sam Altman spent without a job, sharing excerpts from his November 2018 conversation with Craig Cannon. Altman said he read many dozens of textbooks and met people working in different fields. Helping them sometimes led to lessons or opportunities to invest in their startups, he recalled. “Almost all of it didn't work out,” he said, but it planted seeds for things that worked later.
