View | Sam Altman fires brash tweets — but does the world need another Elon Musk

But is it the right thing to do? Does the world need another Elon Musk? Does Sam Altman need to emulate Musk? Genius and visionary though Musk may be, he is also brash,  unapologetic, and provocative, and he can afford to be all of those things as he is living in a fortress of cash defended by an army of expensive lawyers — he is nearly untouchable, and he comes out relatively unscathed from any punishment the authorities dole out.

Also, remember that Musk started his antics only after 2016 or so, when his companies really started taking off (no pun intended), and his status as a visionary — some even called him the real-life Tony Stark — was more or less cemented.

Altman's tweets apparently refer to the $7 trillion he aims to raise; he has seemingly set his bar higher by $1 billion. But the way he phrased it was less than ideal, especially since, just a day earlier, the United Arab Emirates expressed an openness to Altman's vision of being the AI regulatory sandbox for the world.

Is Altman banking on his celebrity status to get away with such irreverent posts online? It certainly isn't financial heft — his net worth, as per The Financial Express, is $500 million, most of which is tied up in equity. It is also less than 0.3% of Musk's net worth of $180 billion.

Lest we forget, it was not that long ago that Altman found himself without a job after he was abruptly fired by OpenAI's board. Yes, he has since staged a comeback and has since broadened his vision to semiconductor chips and broader AI applications — the reason for his seeking $7 trillion — but one, especially in the rapidly evolving, cut-throat world of technology, must never lose sight of the forest for the trees.

Yes, Sam Altman is a visionary — the current explosion of  AI would probably not have come about if it were not for OpenAI, just as electric vehicles, private space exploration, private satellite-linked internet connectivity and human brain impants would have been mere pipe dreams were it not for Musk and his aggressive vision. However, Musk, in recent years, has become a brand of his own and synonymous with the companies he owns — Tesla, SpaceX, X Corp, etc — all by chasing fame or notoriety, depending on how you view Musk.

Musk is far from the first visionary the world has seen. Remember Larry Page, Sergey Brin, and Eric Schmidt? The first two changed the world — for better or for worse — when they founded Google during the infancy of the internet in 1998, and the latter took it to new heights under his stewardship from 2001 to 2011. They knew what they had to do, and went about doing it while keeping their heads down. They ran the business, the brand, but did not become the brand.

Bill Gates is best known for co-founding Microsoft but has never once made it about himself. He spent his active years building Microsoft into a tech giant and later, turned to philanthropy. Fame came to him. He did not go chasing it.

The same can be said about arguably one of the greatest tech visionaries of all time — Steve Jobs. Jobs, who co-founded Apple with Steve Wozniak, changed the world when he introduced the first iPhone in 2007. He had glaring flaws as a person, but that is a personal matter. He put the company and its products first, and any legendary status he earned was a byproduct of his vision. Wozniak, on the other hand, was the consummate engineer, who shunned fame and focused on making products. If Jobs was the heart and soul of Apple, Wozniak was the brains.

Sam Altman would do well to take a page out of these men's books and let his products make or break him, and not count on the cult of personality — which he has yet to build — to sell products.

Friday's tweets could be an outlier — I certainly hope so — but if not, Altman may be in for a rude awakening. He could very well find out that it is not easy being a brash, maverick entrepreneur who, as I alluded to earlier, shoots first and asks no questions.

The world has room for only one of them. His name is Elon Musk.