Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, said in an interview that this period should be considered the era of comeback and success for people who previously only had ideas but lacked the technical ability to implement them; those who were once mockingly called “idea people.”
According to Eitna, Altman likened the situation to an example: “Like someone who has the idea for a good song but needs a guitar player to make it.”
Explaining further, he said: once such people were mocked, but now a new generation is forming that works on their ideas at unprecedented speed, and the economic equations for starting a small or large business have completely changed.
Currently, polls show most Americans believe the risks of artificial intelligence outweigh its benefits, and public concern and anger about data centers have become one of the bipartisan issues in the U.S. midterm elections.
Altman, who is trying to present AI as an opportunity amid this wave of public discontent, has previously said that now is the best time in history to start a startup.
The reality of the matter
However, these new tools are more useful to idea people, while most people are doers rather than dreamers, and lack the time or skills to start a startup in their spare time.
Experience has shown that AI creates real opportunities mainly for a small percentage of people who are idea-generators or problem-solvers and have the ability to execute an idea.
The wave of startup formation in the U.S. began during COVID and has continued through this year. According to U.S. Census Bureau data, the number of new businesses registered in the first half of this year has exceeded three million, the highest figure for a January-to-June period since 2005.
Background
Altman first raised this idea in the spring of this year during an interview. He said at that meeting that these people used to be mocked and it always bothered him, but now the situation has completely reversed.
Altman added that in the past the most important element of a founding team was technical talent, but now he is willing to invest in people who cannot code but have a deep understanding of their users.
In his recent interview with Axios, Altman said that with the new GPT-6 Astra model, anyone can effectively run a small business, because this technology is essentially like having employees at a genius level in every specialty.
He also referred to an example of a person who built software with the GPT-5.6 model and sold it to 50 people, each paying about $500 per month; a task that, Altman said, previously cost millions of dollars.
He added that previously building a video game that might appeal to only a few thousand people was not economically justifiable, but now with the help of AI such a thing has become possible.
Conclusion
According to Altman, whether the goal is merely to make personal life easier or to build a large business with broad value creation, the range of possibility these days has dramatically increased.