Sam Altman, founder of OpenAI, marries his boyfriend, an Australian engineer, in a Jewish ceremony on the beach

At what point do you confirm that the photos of your wedding, your own wedding, are authentic and not created with artificial intelligence? At the moment you are Sam Altman, the world's big boss of artificial intelligence. Altman (Chicago, 38 years old) got married these days – it seems that it was on Wednesday, January 10, although the exact date is not known – as they have actually shown Some photographs that throughout Thursday circulated on the social network Of course, the text was not written by ChatGPT, of course.

Altman got married on a beach – in Hawaii, according to some unconfirmed information – with her boyfriend of years, an Australian engineer named Oliver Mulherin, Ollie for friends. At the ceremony, the couple was surrounded by just a dozen guests, as seen in the photos, in a simple and intimate celebration at sunset by the sea and among palm trees. Without a jacket or tie, they were both wearing white shirts (with a small bouquet of flowers in the lapel) and beige pants, as well as white sneakers. The ceremony was officiated by Sam's brother, Jack Altman, also co-founder of a start up human resource management called Lattice. In one of the four photographs that have been released, the couple is seen stepping on what looks like a glass under a napkin. This is a Jewish wedding ritual, in which you have to step on and break a glass object.

The CEO of OpenAI and her husband have known each other for years. They live in the exclusive Russian Hill neighborhood of San Francisco, northern California, and spend weekends on a farm a couple of hours away, in the Napa Valley, where the vegetarian Altman raises cows. The eldest son of four brothers from “a middle-class Jewish family,” as he defines it, he himself has said in different interviews that being a gay teenager where he grew up, in Saint Louis (Missouri), in the early years of the 1990s, The 2000s, was not something easy, and that precisely took refuge in technology, which he began to use when he was barely eight years old. Thanks to his first Mac computer and different internet forums he felt more understood and accepted.

The private life of the CEO of the large artificial intelligence company of the moment has remained private for years, but last June the couple was seen together at a dinner at the White House that President Joe Biden hosted. honor of his Indian counterpart, Narendra Modi. Also a month ago, in December, they could be seen at the party organized at the Plaza hotel in New York by the magazine time, which in 2023 has named Altman as the best CEO of the year. Before his relationship with Mulherin, Altman dated Nick Sivo, another engineer with whom he founded a company in 2005, for nine years. start up of geolocation called Loopt and with whom he broke up in 2012, shortly after selling the company for more than 43 million dollars. After selling it, he took a sabbatical year which, as he has said in an interview, made him change his perspective on life and take things slowly, since the Loopt project had left him exhausted and ill.

For its part, little is known about Mulherin. He said he studied computing at the University of Melbourne, in his native Australia, and then worked for two years at Meta. About five years ago he was dedicated to code issues related to the language and the game, but right now it is unknown if he is still doing it or not. According to Altman in a recent interview with The New York Magazinethey want to have children soon.

In recent weeks Altman has been in the eye of the media and technological hurricane for issues more related to his work than to his until now discreet personal life. On November 17, and by surprise, he left his own company. The OpenAI board said goodbye to him abruptly and by video conference. It was Friday. On Saturday, several of the company's brightest heads were leaving after that decision. On Sunday, talk began about a possible return. On Monday, Microsoft signed him, precisely one of the company's shareholders (it has 13 billion dollars invested in it), where he was going to lead a “new advanced artificial intelligence research team.” On Tuesday night, just five days after the soap opera started, they decided to readmit him to OpenIA. The many changes and twists showed the chaotic nature of a booming sector, which moves tens of billions of dollars and in which powerful forces, mainly economic, pull on both sides of the rope (between unstoppable advance and development). slower) in a technology in which everything has yet to be explored. And Altman will be one of those architects of the future.