Author: openjargon

Delta has dozens of SkyClubs across the US, and there are plenty of ways to get access, such as a paid membership, flying on a first or business-class ticket on Delta or an eligible partner, or having the right credit card.

The new Delta One lounges, which are expected to open in Los Angeles and Boston later this year, are more selective. According to Delta, same-day arriving or departing Delta One passengers and invite-only 360 members flying first class can visit.

Also allowed are those departing or connecting same-day on partner airlines in their respective business or first-class cabins. These include Air France, Korean Air, Latam, KLM, and Virgin Atlantic Airways. You can't get in by having the right credit card.

A frosted-glass room will welcome eligible travelers and direct them to the check-in desks. This is Delta's second dedicated business-class check-in, the other being at Los Angeles International Airport.

The LAX location connects to a SkyClub — which is one of its most extravagant ones, in my opinion — but the airline said it will eventually lead to its own Delta One Lounge in October.

At Wednesday's opening, customers will use whatever security line they're eligible for at New York-JFK, like PreCheck or Delta's digital ID line.

However, come fall, Delta One lounge-goers can use a private TSA security line that leads right into the lounge. Delta has a similar setup at LAX.

To its credit, American has a fast-track security line for its premium passengers flying out of its fully renovated Terminal 8 at New York-JFK, which is co-branded with Oneworld partner British Airways.

I've previously visited two of American's new Flagship lounges at JFK and United's Polaris lounge at Dulles International Airport in Washington, DC.

All are beautifully done and individually have great elements — like United's sleeping pods and restaurant and American's wine-pouring table and circular Champagne bar.

However, I like that Delta combines everything into one and tops it off with a penthouse flare and bougie finish. It's simply more extravagant with a wider variety of amenities compared.

The sit-down restaurant offers a three-course meal complete with an appetizer, main course, and dessert. There's all sorts of seating, from high-top tables to booths, and charging ports are also available.

"We haven't done anything like this before in any of our SkyClubs," Claude Roussel, VP of Delta Sky Clubs and Lounge Experience, told Business Insider. "The level of food and beverage and quality is really unlike anything you'll see, we think, at any other airport lounges."

The restaurants at United and Delta's business-class lounges are separate from their respective buffet and market areas and offer on-demand dining.

Delta's dining room felt like I was in a Manhattan skyrise, complete with gold and wood finishings, unique wall and ceiling designs, an open kitchen, and a chandelier inspired by the Brooklyn Bridge.

Delta partnered with famous New York City-based Union Square Events and Restaurant Associates, a Danny Meyer concept, for the restaurant menu.

The meal (which had five courses for the media instead of the planned three) included hamachi crudo, corn agnolotti, seared salmon, rotisserie chicken, dark chocolate souffle, and New York cheesecake.

The market and bakery host everything from salmon and flatbread to avocado toast and eggplant Parmesan. Allergies and other eating restrictions can be accommodated.

It's impossible to go hungry here.

The cold drinks on tap during the preview included things like green tea, beetroot, and flavored waters.

Staff members were available to take orders.

The half-circle bar reminds me of the equally beautiful champagne bar that is the centerpiece of American's Terminal 8 Chelsea Lounge.

Roussel said a few expensive top-shelf drinks at the Delta One Lounge, like a LOUIS XIII Cognac, will cost, but most alcohol is complimentary.

The lounge has hundreds of seating spots available, from the bar to the restaurant to the terrace to the living room, complete with loungers, couches, and soundproof booths for private calls.

There's also a smaller dining area by the buffet, and beyond that is a section designed for business travelers. Here, customers can find portable computer monitors made by the company Espresso that connect to a laptop to provide a second screen.

The Delta One Lounge's all-season terrace resembles the indoor-outdoor concept also present at its grandiose Los Angeles SkyClub.

"The sunroof will open, and it's fully conditioned, so you can be there in the middle of winter or on a beautiful spring day," Roussel said.

The best part of the terrace, though, in my opinion, is the view of the planes. I could sit there and just watch them come and go all day.

Delta's swanky new lounge offers a mini spa with three wellness services: shoulder and neck massage, hand and arm massage, and eye treatment. Roussel said the services would take about 15 minutes to keep travelers' time in mind.

Products from Grown Alchemist are available on a cart, like face and hand creams and toners.

United, by comparison, has two full sleeping pods at Dulles with beds and a door, but Roussel said Delta's JFK lounge isn't intended for transiting passengers needing a long sleep.

"We focus really on the flights going out in the afternoon, so we don't expect people wanting to come here and take three to four-hour naps," he said. "You may have a connecting passenger in the morning, but that's not the breath of our clientele."

In addition to separate restrooms, the Delta One Lounge sports giant shower rooms stocked with toiletries, towels, slippers, and robes. Staff members are available to help.

For example, Roussel pointed to the two-way closet where customers can place suits or jackets so employees can access them without opening the shower room door.

This allows them to press or iron their clothes while the traveler freshens up. United has the same design, as well as offers robes, heated towels, and toiletry products.

If you are fresh off a long-haul flight from Europe and heading for a meeting, you could shower, get your suit pressed, and have your shoes shined all in one place.

Delta said this all-inclusive experience would distinguish it as a premium airline, and Roussel described the new exclusive Delta One space as a "destination lounge."

Delta clearly knows what its most premium customers want, from the unique artwork lining the walls and spacious seating to the business-focused services like portable monitors and suit pressing.

"You might be here for four hours and start with a coffee, followed by lunch at the Brasserie and a massage in our wellness treatment, and finishing with a cocktail at the bar before you leave," Roussel said.

Delta has had a problem with its SkyClubs being overcrowded with long entry lines, prompting the airline to change who can access the lounges, including barring employees and restricting basic economy tickets.

With the opening of the new Delta One Lounge, SkyClub goers will get relief at JFK — and eventually at Los Angeles and Boston this fall.

The cheeseburger from Burger King cost $2.59, excluding tax.

The burger was extremely simple, but I was impressed by the generous serving of toppings. There was a hearty amount of condiments on the burger, and the cheese was thick and perfectly melted.

The flame-grilled burger had a grilled, smoky flavor that worked well with the ketchup and mustard.

Not only was this burger flavorful, but it also provided the best value — priced at $2.59, it was the cheapest option among the cheeseburgers I tried.

I enjoyed this burger a lot, but it could have been improved with an extra patty or more creative ingredients. At the end of the day, it was a basic fast-food cheeseburger.

It cost $3.89, excluding tax and fees.

Like the regular cheeseburger, there was a hearty serving of ketchup and mustard.

I thought this burger was certainly a step up from the regular cheeseburger. It packed the same grilled flavor and low price, but the extra patty made it even more flavorful and filling.

The burger cost me $10.79, excluding tax, making it the second-most expensive burger I tried.

The burger patties had a deliciously smoky and savory flavor that gave the sandwich a freshly grilled taste. The lettuce and tomato slices tasted extremely fresh, and I liked the addition of mayonnaise.

However, I thought this burger could have been improved with another slice of cheese between the layers of beef. The cheese's flavor was lost amid all the meat and other toppings.

This burger was extremely filling, and I would struggle to eat it all, in addition to fries. However, if you have a big appetite or simply love Burger King's beef, this might just be the burger for you.

The burger was also significantly more expensive than the smaller cheeseburgers and the regular Whopper with cheese. However, I don't think the higher price was worth it — the two extra patties were a hindrance, rather than an asset, to the burger.

It cost $10.99, excluding tax and fees, making it the most expensive burger I tried.

The burger was swimming in mayonnaise and ketchup, but I didn't mind.

I like mayonnaise a lot, but I quickly noticed the generous amount spread on both the burger and the sesame-seed bun. If you're not fond of mayo, you might consider customizing or skipping this burger.

The slices of cheese were evenly layered over the burger patties, which had a distinct smoky taste.

The perfectly crispy bacon added even more smoky flavor, and the cheese and condiments added a lot of moisture, which I felt the Triple Whopper lacked.

Burger King's signature burger has been around since 1957, just four years after the chain opened. Back then, the Whopper cost 37 cents.

Today, it costs $8.29, excluding tax and fees.

Immediately, it was evident that this burger would be bursting with flavor. Thick layers of ketchup and mayo spilled from the sides of the burger, but the sizable sesame-seed bun kept all the ingredients together.

The cheese coated the burger patty, and the lettuce, tomatoes, and onions all tasted very fresh. They added a delicious crunch to the burger.

Even though this burger is a classic, and perhaps not the most creative burger I tried, it was the most satisfying. I also thought it was a great value for the price, and I would definitely order it again and again.

The Tourbillion's styling evolves from the outgoing Chiron's aesthetics. It retains the brand's signature horseshoe grille and the Bugatti Line, which resembles a curved C on the side of the car.

According to the Bugatti, the Tourbillion's designers sought to balance the desire to create something with enduring beauty, like the timeless Bugatti Atlantic, while also ensuring the aerodynamic performance of a vehicle capable of exceeding 250mph.

This is a departure from the Veyron and Chiron, which both had conventional out-swinging doors.

The Tourbillon is powered by a new 8.3 liter naturally aspirated V16 engine paired with three electric motors that come together to produce a total of 1,800 horsepower.

The new V16 engine, developed with assistance from legendary British engineering firm Cosworth, produces 1,000 horsepower without help from the quad turbochargers found in Bugatti's previous engine and can reach 9,000 rpms.

The trio of electric motors, two mounted on the front axle and one on the rear axle, produce 800 horsepower and are paired with a 25 kWh oil-cooled battery pack to give the Tourbillon up to 37 miles in all-electric range.

The Tourbillon will send its power to the road through a new bespoke eight-speed twin-clutch gearbox.

Like its name, the interior of the Tourbillon is inspired by horology, with analog dials at the forefront and digital displays hidden away.

The Tourbillon's gauges, designed and built with help from Swiss watchmakers, consist of more than 600 parts made of titanium and gemstones like sapphire and ruby.

The gauges are affixed to the center of the steering wheel, and the wheel's rim rotates around them.

This is a nod to the tourbillon mechanism in watches, which helps the timepieces be more precise. Tourbillons usually consist of a constantly rotating cage surrounding components inside a watch.

What is modern today can look arcane tomorrow. As a result, technological elements such as the infotainment screen can be retracted when not in use.

Each unit carries a starting price of 3.8 million euros, or roughly $4.1 million.

He learned how to program and take apart a Macintosh computer when he was 8 years old, according to The New Yorker. He attended John Burroughs School, a private, non-sectarian college-preparatory school in St. Louis.

"Growing up gay in the Midwest in the two-thousands was not the most awesome thing," he told The New Yorker. "And finding AOL chat rooms was transformative. Secrets are bad when you're eleven or twelve."

Altman came out as gay to the whole community after a Christian group boycotted an assembly at his school that was about sexuality.

"What Sam did changed the school," his college counselor, Madelyn Gray, told The New Yorker. "It felt like someone had opened up a great big box full of all kinds of kids and let them out into the world."

The app shared a user's location with their friends. Loopt was part of the first group of eight companies at startup accelerator Y Combinator. Each startup got $6,000 per founder, and Loopt was in the same batch as Reddit, according to The Business of Business.

The $43 million sale price was close to how much it had raised from investors, The Wall Street Journal reported. The company was acquired by Green Dot, a banking company known for prepaid cards.

One of Loopt's cofounders, Nick Sivo, and Altman dated for nine years, but they broke up after they sold the company.

 That included a large part of the $5 million he got from Loopt, and an investment from billionaire entrepreneur and venture capitalist Peter Thiel. Altman invested 75% of that money into YC companies, and led Reddit's Series B fundraising round.

He told The New Yorker, "you want to invest in messy, somewhat broken companies. You can treat the warts on top, and because of the warts the company will be hugely underpriced."

While he was YC president, Altman taught a lecture series at Stanford called "How to Start a Startup," in the fall of 2014. The next year, Altman was featured on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list for venture capital at 29 years old.

He chose a fission and a fusion startup for YC because he wanted to start a nuclear-energy company of his own. He invested his own money in both companies and served on their boards.

Mark Andreessen, cofounder of venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, said to The New Yorker, "Under Sam, the level of YC's ambition has gone up 10x."

Altman once told two YC founders that he likes racing cars and had five, including two McLarens and an old Tesla, according to The New Yorker. He's said he likes racing cars and renting planes to fly all over California.

He told the founders of the startup Shypmate that "I prep for survival," and warned of either a "lethal synthetic virus," AI attacking humans, or nuclear war.

"I try not to think about it too much," Altman told the founders in 2016. "But I have guns, gold, potassium iodide, antibiotics, batteries, water, gas masks from the Israeli Defense Force, and a big patch of land in Big Sur I can fly to."

Altman's mom is a dermatologist and told The New Yorker, "Sam does keep an awful lot tied up inside. He'll call and say he has a headache—and he'll have Googled it, so there's some cyber-chondria in there, too. I have to reassure him that he doesn't have meningitis or lymphoma, that it's just stress."

Along with their brother Max, the Altmans launched a fund in 2020 called Apollo that is focused on funding "moonshot" companies. They're startups that are financially risky but could potentially pay off with a breakthrough development.

Their goal for the non-profit artificial intelligence company was to make sure AI doesn't wipe out humans.

"We discussed what is the best thing we can do to ensure the future is good?" Elon Musk told The New York Times in 2015. "We could sit on the sidelines or we can encourage regulatory oversight, or we could participate with the right structure with people who care deeply about developing A.I. in a way that is safe and is beneficial to humanity."

Some of Silicon Valley's most prominent names pledged $1 billion to OpenAI along with Altman and Musk, including Reid Hoffman, the cofounder of LinkedIn, and Thiel.

 He also wanted to know "what would convince them not to vote for him in the future." In a thread on X, formerly Twitter, Altman said he was "voting against Trump because I believe the principles he stands for represent an unacceptable threat to America."

He also said Thiel, who was still working with YC at the time, "is a high profile supporter of Trump" and that "I disagree with this."

But, he said, "YC is not going to fire someone for supporting a major party nominee."

YC and Thiel stopped working together a year later in 2017 for unspecified reasons.

During his interviews, Altman said he "did not expect to talk to so many Muslims, Mexicans, Black people, and women in the course of this project."

He said almost everyone he approached was willing to talk to him, but they also didn't want to share their names in fear of being "targeted by those people in Silicon Valley if they knew I voted for him." Altman said one of the people he talked to in Silicon Valley made him sign a confidentiality agreement before talking because she was scared of losing her job for supporting Trump.

At a StrictlyVC event in 2019, Altman was asked how OpenAI planned to make a profit, and he said the "honest answer is we have no idea."

Altman said OpenAI had "never made any revenue" and that it had "no current plans to make revenue." 

"We have no idea how we may one day generate revenue," he said at the time, according to TechCrunch.

"We want to increase our ability to raise capital while still serving our mission, and no pre-existing legal structure we know of strikes the right balance," OpenAI said on its blog. "Our solution is to create OpenAI LP as a hybrid of a for-profit and nonprofit — which we are calling a 'capped-profit' company."

Altman flew to Seattle to meet with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, where he demonstrated OpenAI's AI models for him, WSJ reported.  The pair announced their business partnership on LinkedIn.

Altman and OpenAI's former chief scientist, Ilya Sutskever, said the move to focus on large language models was the best way for the company to reach artificial general intelligence, or AGI, a system that has broad human-level cognitive abilities.

It wanted to give everyone in the world access to crypto by scanning their iris with an orb. The company was started in 2020, but stopped operating in a few countries in 2022 due to logistics issues, Bloomberg reported. In January, Worldcoin tweeted that it had reached 1 million people and has onboarded over 150,000 first-time crypto users.

Both DALL-E and ChatGPT are known as "generative" AI, meaning the bot creates its own artwork and text based on information it is fed.

After ChatGPT was released on November 30, Altman tweeted that it had reached over 1 million users in five days.

A few days after its launch, Altman said that it "is incredibly limited, but good enough at some things to create a misleading impression of greatness." Altman posted that ChatGPT was "great" for "fun creative inspiration," but "not such a good idea" to look up facts.

ChatGPT recently began testing a paid version of ChatGPT called "ChatGPT Professional" that is supposed to give better access to the bot. In December, Altman posted that OpenAI "will have to monetize it somehow at some point; the compute costs are eye-watering."

Although specifics of the investment were not shared, it is believed it is worth $10 billion. Before Microsoft's investment, other venture capitalists wanted to buy shares from OpenAI employees in a tender offer that valued the company at around $29 billion.

"Helion is more than an investment to me," Altman told TechCrunch. "It's the other thing beside OpenAI that I spend a lot of time on. I'm just super excited about what's going to happen there."

He told TechCrunch that he's "happy there's a fusion race," to build a low-cost fusion energy system that can eventually power the Earth.

People who pay $20 a month for ChatGPT Plus get benefits such as access to the site even when traffic is high, faster responses from the bot, and first access to new features and ChatGPT improvements.

The subscription is only available for people in the US, and OpenAI said it will soon start inviting people on the waitlist to join.

"If AGI is successfully created, this technology could help us elevate humanity by increasing abundance, turbocharging the global economy, and aiding in the discovery of new scientific knowledge that changes the limits of possibility," Altman wrote on OpenAI's blog.

Despite its potential, Altman said artificial general intelligence comes with "serious risk of misuse, drastic accidents, and societal disruption." But instead of stopping its development, Altman said "society and the developers of AGI have to figure out how to get it right."

Altman went on to share the principles that OpenAI "care about most," including "the benefits of, access to, and governance of AGI to be widely and fairly shared."

In an interview with ABC News, Altman said he thinks "people should be happy that we're a little bit scared" of generative AI systems as they develop.

Altman said he doesn't think AI systems should only be developed in a lab.

"You've got to get these products out into the world and make contact with reality, make our mistakes while the stakes are low," he said.

In a blog post, the company said it hoped the option to turn off chat history "provides an easier way to manage your data than our existing opt-out process."

When a user turns off their chat history, new conversations will be kept for 30 days for OpenAI to review them for abuse, then are permanently deleted.

Altman told lawmakers there should be an agency that grants licenses for companies that are working on AI models "above a certain scale of capabilities." He also said the agency should be able to revoke licenses from companies that don't follow safety rules.

"I think if this technology goes wrong, it can go quite wrong," Altman said. "And we want to be vocal about that, we want to work with the government to prevent that from happening."

The app, which is free, can answer text-based and spoken questions using Whisper, another OpenAI product that is a speech-recognition model. Users who have a subscription to ChatGPT Plus can also access it through the app.

At the start of his trip, Altman told reporters in London that he was concerned about the EU's proposed AI Act that focuses on regulating AI and protecting Europeans from AI risks.

"The details really matter," Altman said, according to the Financial Times. "We will try to comply, but if we can't comply, we will cease operating."

However, he shared on X later in the week that OpenAI is "excited to continue to operate here and of course have no plans to leave."

Altman made it clear that he doesn't believe humans should try to be friends with AI in an interview during Wall Street Journal's Tech Live event.

"I personally really have deep misgivings about this vision of the future where everyone is super close to AI friends, and not more so with their human friends," Altman said.

In November, the OpenAI board of directors announced that Altman would be stepping down from his role as CEO and leaving the board, "effective immediately."

In a blog post, the board said it "no longer has confidence in his ability to continue leading OpenAI," and added that Altman was "not consistently candid in his communications."

"We are grateful for Sam's many contributions to the founding and growth of OpenAI," a statement from OpenAI's board says. "At the same time, we believe new leadership is necessary as we move forward."

Altman issued his own statement via a post on X.

"i loved my time at openai. it was transformative for me personally, and hopefully the world a little bit. most of all i loved working with such talented people," Altman wrote.

He added: "will have more to say about what's next later."

After a chaotic weekend over his firing, Altman and OpenAI announced that he would return to the tech company as CEO.

"We have reached an agreement in principle for Sam Altman to return to OpenAI as CEO with a new initial board of Bret Taylor (Chair), Larry Summers, and Adam D'Angelo," the company wrote on X.

Altman is married. The OpenAI CEO wed his partner Oliver Mulherin, with photos from the wedding circulating on social media in January 2024.

An attendee of the wedding confirmed to Business Insider that the pictures weren't AI-generated. His husband is an Australian software engineer who previously worked at Meta, according to his LinkedIn profile.

In February, OpenAI unveiled Sora to the public. The program — named after the Japanese word for "sky" — creates up to 0ne-minute long videos from text prompts. 

"We're teaching AI to understand and simulate the physical world in motion, with the goal of training models that help people solve problems that require real-world interaction," OpenAI wrote in Sora's announcement.

Sora is still in the midst of risk and harm assessments by red teamers, but Altman is already showing off its capabilities on social media, and the company is reportedly shopping the tool around to Hollywood.

A few weeks after Forbes declared Altman a billionaire, he and his partner signed the Giving Pledge, vowing to give away most of his fortune.

"We would not be making this pledge if it weren't for the hard work, brilliance, generosity, and dedication to improve the world of many people that built the scaffolding of society that let us get here," the pledge letter read.

They continued: "There is nothing we can do except feel immense gratitude and commit to pay it forward, and do what we can to build the scaffolding up a little higher."

During its "Spring Update" on May 13, OpenAI announced GPT-4o, an updated version of its large language model that powers ChatGPT. OpenAI CTO Mira Murati made the announcement, and Altman didn't make an appearance despite actively promoting the event on X. 

Altman might've been absent from the presentation, but the demonstrations of ChatGPT's voice and video capabilities created buzz online. It also led to Altman and his company being called out by actor Scarlett Johansson, who alleged that the OpenAI chatbot Sky's voice sounded "eerily similar" to her own after she declined a partnership.

Altman's post on X referencing a movie in which Johansson voices someone's virtual girlfriend was quickly called into question, and the company soon said that it would not move forward with the voice heard in the demo.

After much debate about how it would enter the AI arms race, Apple announced at WWDC 2024 that it would partner with OpenAI to close the gap between it and its rivals.

Although Bloomberg reported that Apple isn't paying OpenAI in cash, the tech titan's solid installed base of over two billion users means more people may use ChatGPT if it comes integrated with Siri. According to the presentation, Siri will be able to handle more complex requests with help from ChatGPT.

Altman was spotted attending WWDC the day the partnership was announced and speaking to high-ranking Apple employees ahead of the keynote. 

Correction: February 2, 2023 — An earlier version of this story defined AGI incorrectly and listed the incorrect age at which Altman was named president of Y Combinator. AGI in this context stands for artificial general intelligence. Altman became president of Y Combinator at 28, not 31.