Not sure what future he is referring to, but if he means mach-5 private drones (i.e., one or two passenger) then it is not the future I want to live in. We need to advance public transport for the masses and the use of renewable energy for it. We don't need hyper polluting single-digit passenger private transport for the ultra rich.
If, as suggested below, it is all a cover for developing hypersonic autonomous killer drones, count me out too.
I don't think Sam Altman would disagree with this statement. He also recently led a $500 million investment in Helion (https://www.helionenergy.com/articles/helion-raises-500m/), with the goal of achieving net-zero fusion energy by 2024.
Also, a lot of major technological advances enjoyed by the masses today started off as niche defense projects (the Internet, GPS, modern flight, etc). If we're able to prove out the technology for the niche defense use-case, it's not out of the realm of possibility that it will eventually be worth investing in developments of the same technology in ways that may benefit the masses.
That said, it is true that Sam Altman does not hold a strict pacifist view on technological improvements in defense (i.e. funding of killing machines). That's a thornier debate.
Either way, he's deploying his capital in ways that advance each of these goals, and he notably has deployed more capital towards renewable energy than developing so-called "killing machines" (setting aside the possibility of subsequent mass-market inventions that spin off from military technology development).
LOL, unbelievable!
> and building for both commercial and defense markets