Welcome to Hopefully Beneficial!
Hello and welcome to the first post of Hopefully Beneficial, I’m Ben Happ.
Over the next decade, I plan to publish 2,500 pieces. As the name makes clear, my deep hope is that this work will be beneficial. For whom, and in what way? Those are open questions and I’m curious to find out. At the very least, I believe this project will change me for the better, and I’m willing to invest the time and energy to test that hypothesis. And I want to be awesome for you. I want you to look forward to these posts like I look forward to Money Stuff by Matt Levine, Stratechery by Ben Thompson, TGIF by Bari Weiss & Co., Founders by David Senra, or On Being by Krista Tippett. But this is much different than any of those. Think of Hopefully Beneficial as a love song, exploring life and expanding the scope of what is possible. If you choose to join this journey of exploration, all the better - let’s do this together! I can’t yet imagine all the places it might go, but I suspect that the range of possible outcomes is heavily skewed toward the positive.
So with that, I say: Yalla! Let’s go.
Here’s how it works: I’ll share a Daily Dose of Good Monday through Friday, with a weekly digest on Sundays. Mondays we’ll focus on Business; Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays, I’ll highlight notable People, Places, and Things; on Fridays, we’ll enjoy The Arts; and on Shabbat, we rest.
I’m starting on Substack, and plan to add YouTube, Spotify, Instagram, etc. and I’ll even do some old-school formats—email newsletters, printed books, maybe carrier pigeon delivery, who knows!
Special thanks to our launch sponsor, Friday Glory Texas Ranch, and to you for being here. If you find this of value, excellent! Please subscribe and join our community! All net proceeds from Hopefully Beneficial will support The BERA Foundation.
Now that you know what we’re about, let’s kick things off with our first post. On Mondays, we are all business, and today we are focused on what may well be the most important and transformative company in the world: OpenAI.
OpenAI began a decade ago, as a bold experiment: could a small group of technologists shape the future of artificial intelligence not just for profit, but for the benefit of humanity? Founded by Elon Musk, Sam Altman, Greg Brockman, Ilya Sutskever, and others, OpenAI was launched as a nonprofit research lab committed to ensuring that artificial intelligence would be developed safely and shared broadly.
In 2019, Microsoft invested $1 billion in a partnership that deepened over time and helped bring ChatGPT to the world. Sam Altman emerged as the face of OpenAI—an unlikely tech CEO with a philosopher's ambition and a startup founder’s drive.
OpenAI's impact is seismic. Its GPT models have redefined what machines can do with language, pushing the boundaries of science, education, healthcare, creativity, coding, and more. In doing so, OpenAI hasn’t just built software—it’s built a new interface between humans and machines. It has sparked a global wave of innovation and a critically important debate about AI’s role in society.
Stepping back for a moment, I want to acknowledge that the technological advances in my lifetime have been staggering. When I was 10, I remember being in the car with my father, and hearing on the radio about Microsoft’s IPO and a 30-year old wunderkind named Bill Gates, who was shaking-up the tech world. In 1999, as a grad student at Berkeley, I remember an acquaintance telling our table at the bar that he was dropping out to join a new company with a funny and delightfully wonderful name, Google. I also remember a cognitive neuroscience student in my cohort trying to explain to me the fantastical concept of Artificial Intelligence and why it would TOTALLY BE A THING. And now, fast-forward to OpenAI. I will never forget my wife Yael and I walking into our friend Rachel’s apartment and seeing a series of amazing art that her boyfriend, now husband, Sean had made for her using a Dall-E model that was not yet available to the public. Serious flex. OpenAI tools are now a staple in my daily life.
Why is OpenAI arguably the most transformative company in the world? Because it sits at the fulcrum of a technological revolution that could change everything—from how we work to how we think. Its tools are becoming ubiquitous and its adoption rates are simply jaw-dropping. If it succeeds in guiding the development of AGI responsibly, it won’t just reshape industries—it will redefine the human experience. That’s not hype. That’s history in motion.
And friends, that’s a wrap on post #1, only 2,499 to go. See you tomorrow with more from Hopefully Beneficial. Shalom and let’s go!
great thinking!!!
So good!!! Here for the ride, Benj💙💙