Sam Altman Needs to Learn How to Monetize AI from this Guy

You don’t need to buy any AI courses!

Recently, the meme above has taken Chinese social media by storm: it lists AI leaders from China and the United States.

Everyone knows the person on the left, he is Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI. So who is the man on the right, and how does it tie in with Sam Altman?

To put it simply, he is a salesman. He made huge profits by selling AI courses. It is estimated that sales of his courses have reached 150 million Chinese Yuan or approximately 20 million US dollars.

How about it, are you envious?

When many AI companies such as Google, OpenAI, Bytedance, and Baidu spend billions of dollars training AI models but are still in a loss-making stage, the guy has achieved financial freedom by selling AI courses.

Therefore, many people joke that Sam Altman should learn AI commercialization skills from him.

Do you think the quality of his courses is particularly high?

Not really. His course is not about the knowledge of AI algorithms such as Transformer, neural network, and calculus, but the usage skills of normal AI products. Specifically: how to use GPT, how to use Stable Diffusion, etc., and the content quality is not very high.

After he became popular, he received a lot of criticism from practitioners in the AI industry.

If so, why do so many people buy his course?

It’s because he captured the workers’ anxiety about AI.

As the AI wave led by ChatGPT and MidJourney sweeps the world, many people have developed severe anxiety about AI:

• Will AI cause me to lose my job?
• Will I be eliminated by those adept at using AI?

This anxiety exists in the hearts of many workers, leading them to experience FOMO (Fear of Missing Out).

However, at the same time, they are not practitioners in the AI industry. They don’t know how to get involved in this wave. They always want to do something, but they don’t know how to go about it.

With this background, many influencers have capitalized on the anxiety of the working population, beginning their performance. They continue to promote the threat of AI, exacerbating the anxiety of workers. Then, they start to package themselves as AI masters. Finally, they begin to sell their expensive courses.

They try to convince consumers that by purchasing their courses, they can keep up with the AI wave. It seems as though their courses are panaceas that can cure AI anxiety.

But in reality, these courses do not possess any magic. They simply repackage the free and publicly available content from the internet. Even the protagonist of our article is not an AI researcher; he graduated from an art academy.

I share this story here not to ridicule him, but to warn readers, especially those who are anxious about the development of AI.

Don’t be fooled by those influencers, their AI courses don’t have much value. I have also seen many so-called AI experts selling their expensive courses on YouTube, Twitter, and some other platforms. I hope you won’t be fooled or deceived.

You should know the following facts:

All AI products will become increasingly easier to use

Whether it is ChatGPT or MidJourney, they have a strong product design team dedicated to making their products easy to use.

Would you buy a course on “How to use Google” or “How to use iPhone”?

If not, you don’t need to buy courses on how to use ChatGPT or MidJourney.

There is enough free content on the Internet already

Thanks to this era and those enthusiastic sharers. Now, no matter it is any new knowledge or technology, there will immediately be many people willing to share their experience free of charge. And those expensive courses actually just repeat that knowledge.

Free knowledge is enough, you don’t need to spend money.

You don’t need to worry

You should indeed pay attention to AI trends and be good at using AI products, but there is no need to be too anxious.

AI is a thing that benefits mankind. You are a beneficiary of technological progress, and everyone will be.

Don’t worry!