Peter Thiel: The Conservative Visionary
Facebook, SpaceX, Airbnb, LinkedIn, PayPal, Ethereum. The revolution of OpenAI and ChatGPT, the rise of Donald Trump and his ubiquitous (until recently) ally Elon Musk. Is there really one person who ties all these phenomena together? More than that: it is no exaggeration to say that if it weren't for today's hero, hardly any of them would have come true… Peter Thiel has earned the name of a prophet, a guru. The great visionary of the tech age. And yet he holds deeply controversial views that somehow stay out of the big media noise. But that is typical of the German-born entrepreneur. Some see him as the éminence grise of Silicon Valley, others as a sage who can show anyone the road to great success in the technological era. A multibillionaire, he says competition is a deceptive good and monopolies are the solution of the future. He created a large-scale program to help people who choose to abandon their education in order to start their own business, which in turn paves the way for the next generation of tech leaders. All this and much more is Mr. Thiel. It is time he stepped into the spotlight, because he is certainly one of the people who have already changed the lives of each of us. More than that: ever more is expected to depend on him in the turbulent technological times we live in.
02What Do the World's Tech Titans Read?
Do the world's tech leaders read books? What are the favorite reads recommended by Elon Musk, Sam Altman and Mark Zuckerberg? Will you find some overlap with your own literary taste, or is there no such topic at all? In Bulgaria it isn't fashionable to talk in the media about what we read. Journalist and translator Daniel Penev got me thinking about this during his visit. Yes, you'll probably remember the notorious Winnetou as someone's favorite book and… that's it. It isn't like that everywhere. In both West and East, the people who end up in the spotlight love to talk about books, about their favorite authors, about the literature that helps us keep going. Well, it's time we started doing it here too!
03Sam Altman, the Father of ChatGPT
Have you heard of Sam Altman? The famous ChatGPT owes its success to him; he runs OpenAI, the company that showed the world how far artificial intelligence has come. By all signs, he will be the next big name. He will make the Silicon Valley news that echoes around the world. His few interviews are worth listening to closely as we look for the big news coming in the world of artificial intelligence. A programmer who never quite happened, an entrepreneur who has seen both success and failure up close. An innovator who landed in exactly the right place. A visionary without grand words. An American of Jewish descent, the first leader on such a scale who makes no secret of being gay. This figure, still hidden behind the chatbot, has yet to give birth to big stories and big changes. And conspiracy theories, everything that comes with his status. Not long ago he set aside from his “savings” two sums of hundreds of millions of dollars each and gave them to research into dramatically extending human life and the search for cold fusion—a technology that could solve humanity's energy needs for the long term…
04The Kid Who Talks to the Blockchain
He is only 27 and already a billionaire. More important, though, he gave birth to the technology that showed what blockchain is capable of. Ethereum's creator, Vitalik Buterin, is a fascinating character, and we should expect plenty more serious tech news from him.
