Sam Altman: Getting Fired (and Re-Hired) by OpenAI, Agents, AI Copyright issues

1. 0:00 – 2:28

   Welcoming Sam Altman to the show!

   1. JCJason Calacanis0:00

      I first met our next guest, Sam Altman, almost 20 years ago when he was working on a local mobile app called Loopt. We were both backed by Sequoia Capital, and in fact, we were both in the first class of Sequoia Scouts. He did investment in a little unknown fintech company called Stripe, I did Uber, and in that tiny experimental fund-

   2. SASam Altman0:19

      You did Uber? I've never heard that before. (laughs)

   3. CPChamath Palihapitiya0:20

      Yeah. (laughs) I think so. Possible.

   4. DSDavid Sacks0:22

      Cool.

   5. CPChamath Palihapitiya0:22

      I've got the starting ready. (laughs)

   6. DFDavid Friedberg0:24

      You should write a book, Jacob. (laughs)

   7. CPChamath Palihapitiya0:26

      Maybe. What's going on? Let your winners ride.

   8. JCJason Calacanis0:31

      Rain Man, David Sa-

   9. CPChamath Palihapitiya0:35

      What's going on?

   10. DSDavid Sacks0:36

       And it's sad. We open sourced it to the fans, and they've just gone crazy with it.

   11. CPChamath Palihapitiya0:40

       Love you Betsy.

   12. DSDavid Sacks0:40

       What's his... queen of quinoa.

   13. CPChamath Palihapitiya0:42

       Going all in.

   14. JCJason Calacanis0:45

       That tiny experimental fund that Sam and I were part of as Scouts is Sequoia's highest multiple returning fund. Couple of low digit millions turned into over 200 million, I'm told.

   15. SASam Altman0:54

       Really?

   16. JCJason Calacanis0:54

       And then he did... Yeah, that's what I was telling you-

   17. SASam Altman0:56

       Wow.

   18. JCJason Calacanis0:56

       ... about Rudolph, yeah. And he did a stint at Y Combinator, where he was president from 2014 to 2019. In 2016, he co-founded OpenAI with the goal of ensuring that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity. In 2019, he left YC to join OpenAI full-time as CEO. Things got really interesting on November 30th of 2022. That's the day OpenAI launched ChatGPT. In January 2023, Microsoft invested $10 billion in November 2023. Over a crazy five-day span, Sam was fired from OpenAI, everybody was gonna go work at Microsoft, a bunch of heart emojis went viral on X/Twitter, and people started speculating that the team had reached artificial general intelligence, the world was gonna end, and suddenly, a couple days later, he was back to being the CEO of OpenAI. In February, Sam was reportedly looking to raise $7 trillion for an AI chip project. This, after it was reported that Sam was looking to raise a billion from Masayoshi-san to create an iPhone killer with Jony Ive, the co-creator of the iPhone. All of this while ChatGPT has become better and better, and a household name. It's having a massive impact on how we work and how work is getting done, and it's reportedly the fastest product to hit 100 million users in history in just two months. And check out OpenAI's insane revenue ramp-up. They reportedly hit 2 billion in ARR last year. Welcome to the All-In Podcast, Sam Altman.

   19. SASam Altman2:25

       Thank you. Thank you, guys.

   20. JCJason Calacanis2:26

       Sacks, you wanna lead us off here?

2. 2:28 – 21:56

   What's next for OpenAI: GPT-5, open-source, reasoning, what an AI-powered iPhone competitor could look like, and more

   1. DSDavid Sacks2:28

      Okay, sure. I mean, I, I think the whole industry is waiting with bated breath for the release of GPT-5. I guess it's been reported that it's launching sometime this summer, but that's a pretty big window. Can you narrow that down? I guess, where, where are you in the release of GPT-5?

   2. SASam Altman2:44

      Uh, we, we take our time on releases of major new models, and I don't think we, uh... I think it will be great, uh, when we do it, and I think we'll be thoughtful about how we do it. Uh, like, we may release it in a different way than we've released previous models. Um, also, I don't even know if we'll call it GPT-5. Um, what I, what I will say is, you know, a lot of people have noticed how much better GPT-4 has gotten, um, since we've released it, and particularly over the last few months. I think, I think that's, like, a better hint of what the world looks like, where it's not the, like, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, but you, you just, you use an AI system, and the whole system just gets better and better fairly continuously. Um, I think that's, like, both a better technological direction. I think that's, like, easier for society to adapt to. Um, but, but I assume that's where we'll head.

   3. DFDavid Friedberg3:41

      Does that mean that there's not gonna be long training cycles, and it's continuously retraining or training sub-models, Sam? And maybe you could just speak to us about what might change architecturally going forward with respect to large models.

   4. SASam Altman3:56

      Well, I mean, one, one, one thing that you could imagine is this... just that you keep training-

   5. DFDavid Friedberg4:01

      Right.

   6. SASam Altman4:01

      ... a model. Uh, that, that would seem like a reasonable thing to me.

   7. DFDavid Friedberg4:06

      Do you think that-

   8. JCJason Calacanis4:06

      And when you talk about-

   9. DFDavid Friedberg4:07

      Yeah.

   10. JCJason Calacanis4:07

       ... releasing it differently this time, are you thinking maybe releasing it to the paid users first or, you know, a slower rollout to get the red teams tight since now there's so much at stake? You have so many customers-

   11. SASam Altman4:20

       Yeah.

   12. JCJason Calacanis4:20

       ... actually paying, and you've got everybody watching everything you do. You know, is it, is it a-

   13. SASam Altman4:26

       Well, G-

   14. DFDavid Friedberg4:26

       You have to be more thoughtful now-

   15. SASam Altman4:27

       GPT-4 is-

   16. DFDavid Friedberg4:27

       ... yeah?

   17. SASam Altman4:28

       ... still only available to the paid users, but one of the things that we really want to do is figure out how to make more advanced technology available to free users too. I think that's a super important part of our mission. Uh, and, and this idea that we build AI tools and make them super widely available, free or, you know, not that expensive, whatever it is, so that people can use them to go kind of invent the future rather than the magic AGI in the sky inventing the future and showering it down upon us. Uh, that seems like a much better path. It seems like a more inspiring path. I also think it's where things are actually heading. So, it makes me sad that we have not figured out how to make GPT-4 level technology available to free users. That's something we really wanna do.

   18. JCJason Calacanis5:10

       It's just very expensive, I, I take it?

   19. SASam Altman5:11

       It's very expensive.

   20. DFDavid Friedberg5:13

       Yeah. Chamath, your thoughts?

   21. DSDavid Sacks5:15

       I think maybe the, the two big vectors, Sam, that people always talk about is that underlying cost and sort of the latency that's kind of rate limited a killer app.

   22. SASam Altman5:26

       Yeah.

   23. DSDavid Sacks5:26

       And then I think the second is sort of the long-term ability for people to build in an open source world versus a closed source world. And I think the crazy thing about this space is that the open source community is rabid. So, one example that I think is incredible is, you know, we had these guys do a pretty crazy demo for Devin. Remember? Like, even, like, five or six weeks ago, that looked incredible. And then some kid just published it under an open, uh, MIT license, like OpenDevin, and it's incredibly good and almost as good as that other thing that was closed source. So, maybe we can just start with that, which is...Tell me about the business decision to keep these models close source, and where do you see things going in the next couple of years?

   24. SASam Altman6:15

       So on, on the first part of your question, um, speed and cost, those are hugely important to us. And I don't wanna, like, give a timeline on when we can bring them down a lot 'cause research is hard, but I am confident we'll be able to. Um, we wanna, like, cut the latency super dramatically. We wanna cut the cost really, really dramatically. Um, and I believe that will happen. We're still so early in the development of the science and understanding how this works. Plus, we have all the engineering tailwinds. So I- I don't know, like, when we get to intelligence too cheap to meter and so fast that it feels instantaneous to us and everything else, but I do believe we can get there for, you know, a pretty high level of, of intelligence. And, um, I- it's important to us, it's clearly important to users, and it'll u- unlock a lot of stuff. On the sort of open source/closed source thing, I think there's great roles for both. I, I think, um, you know, we've open source some stuff, we'll open source more stuff in the future, but really, like, our mission is to build towards AGI and to figure out how to broadly distribute its benefits. We have a strategy for that, seems to be resonating with a lot of people. It obviously isn't for everyone and there's, like, a big ecosystem and there'll also be open source models and people who build that way. Um, one area that I'm particularly interested personally in open source for is I want an open source model that is as good as it can be that runs on my phone, and that I think is gonna... You know, the world doesn't quite have the technology for, for a good version of that yet, but that seems like a really important thing to go do at some point.

   25. JCJason Calacanis7:55

       Will you do? Will you do that when you release it?

   26. SASam Altman7:57

       I don't know if we will or someone will, but someone will.

   27. DFDavid Friedberg7:59

       What about LLaMA 3?

   28. SASam Altman8:01

       LLaMA 3 running on a phone?

   29. DFDavid Friedberg8:03

       Well, I guess maybe there's like a 7 billion version.

   30. JCJason Calacanis8:06

       Yeah, yeah, yeah.
3. 21:56 – 33:01

   How advanced agents will change the way we interface with apps

   1. SASam Altman21:56

   2. DSDavid Sacks21:56

      Yeah. The thing in that world where if you have this, like, Jarvis-like thing that can r- reason, what do you think it does to products that you use today where the interface is very valuable? So for example, if you look at an Instacart or if you look at an Uber or if you look at a DoorDash, these are not services that are meant to be pipes that are just providing a set of APIs to a smart set of agents that ubiquitously work on behalf of eight billion people. What do you think has to change in how we think about how apps need to work, of how this entire infrastructure of experiences need to work in a world where you're agentically interfacing to the world, you know?

   3. SASam Altman22:36

      I'm actually very interested in designing a world that is equally usable by humans and by AIs. So I, I, I, uh, I, I like the interpretability of that. I like the smoothness of the handoffs. I like the ability that we can provide feedback or whatever. So, you know, DoorDash could just expose some API to my future AI assistant, and they could go put the order in or whatever. Or I could say, like, I could be holding my phone, and I could say, "Okay, AI assistant, like, you put in this order on DoorDash, please." And I could, like, watch the app open and see the thing clicking around, and I could say, "Hey, no, not this," or, like... Um, there, there's something about designing a world that is usable equally well by humans and AIs that I think is a interesting concept.

   4. DSDavid Sacks23:27

      And can manage the handoffs.

   5. SASam Altman23:28

      For some reason, I'm, like, more excited about humanoid robots than sort of robots of, like, very other shapes. The world is very much designed for humans, and I think we should absolutely keep it that way.

   6. DSDavid Sacks23:36

      Mm-hmm.

   7. SASam Altman23:37

      And a shared interface is nice.

   8. DSDavid Sacks23:39

      So you see voice chat, that modality kinda gets rid of apps. You just ask it for sushi. It knows sushi you liked before. It knows what you don't like and does its best shot at doing it.

   9. SASam Altman23:49

      I, it's hard for me to imagine that we just go to a world totally where you say, like, "Hey, ChatGPT, order me sushi," and it says, "Okay, do you want it from this restaurant? What kind, what time?" Whatever. I think user, I think visual user interfaces are super good for a lot of things. Um, and it's hard for me to imagine, like, a world where you never look at a screen and just use voice mode only. But I, I can imagine that for a lot of things.

   10. DSDavid Sacks24:20

       Yeah, I mean, Apple tried with Siri. Like, you could, you, supposedly you can order at Uber automatically with Siri. I don't think anybody's ever done it because it's-

   11. JCJason Calacanis24:27

       ... why would you take the risk of not

   12. DSDavid Sacks24:29

       Well, the quality-

   13. JCJason Calacanis24:30

       ... bringing your phone? Yeah.

   14. DSDavid Sacks24:30

       To your point, the quality is not good, but when the quality is good enough, you'll a- you'll actually prefer it just because it's just lighter weight. You don't have to take-

   15. JCJason Calacanis24:37

       Mm-hmm.

   16. DSDavid Sacks24:37

       ... your phone out, you don't have to search for your app and press it and, oh, it automatically logged you out. Oh, hold on, log back in. Oh, TFA. It's a whole pain in the ass.

   17. SASam Altman24:45

       You know, it's like setting a timer with Siri, I do every time because it works really well and it's great.

   18. DSDavid Sacks24:51

       It works really well, exactly.

   19. SASam Altman24:51

       And I don't need more information. But ordering an Uber, like, I wanna see the prices for a few different options, I wanna see how far away it is, I wanna see, like, maybe even where they are on the map 'cause I might walk somewhere. I get a lot more information by- I think in less time by looking at that Order the Uber screen than I would if I had to do that-

   20. DSDavid Sacks25:10

       Hmm.

   21. SASam Altman25:10

       ... all through the audio channel. So-

   22. JCJason Calacanis25:12

       I like your idea of watching it happen. That's kinda cool.

   23. SASam Altman25:15

       I think there will just be, like, yeah, different- there are different interfaces we use for different tasks, and I think that'll keep going.

   24. DSDavid Sacks25:22

       Of all the developers that are building apps and experiences on OpenAI, are there a few that stand out for you where you're like, "Okay, this is directionally going in a super interesting area," even if it's, like, a toy app, but are there things that you guys point to and say, "This is really important"?

   25. SASam Altman25:40

       Um, I met with a new company this morning, or b- barely even a company, it's, like, two people that are gonna work on a summer project, trying to actually finally make the AI tutor. Like-

   26. JCJason Calacanis25:51

       Hmm.

   27. SASam Altman25:51

       A- a- and I've always been interested in the space. I- a lot of people have done great stuff on our platform, but if- if someone can deliver, like, the way that you actually, like, uh, they used a phrase I love, which is, "This is gonna be like a Montessori level reinvention for how people, how people learn things."

   28. JCJason Calacanis26:10

       Wow, yeah.

   29. SASam Altman26:10

       Um, but if you can, like, find this new way to, like, let people explore and learn in new ways on their own, I'm personally super excited about that. Um, a lot of the coding related stuff you mentioned, Devin, earlier, I- I think that's, like, a super cool vision of the future. The thing that I am... Heal- healthcare, I- I believe should be pretty transformed by this, but the thing I'm personally most excited about is the sort of doing faster and better scientific discovery. GPT-4 clearly not there in a big way, although maybe it accelerates things a little bit by making scientists more productive, but-

   30. DSDavid Sacks26:46

       But AlphaFold 3, yeah.
4. 33:01 – 42:02

   Fair use, creator rights, why OpenAI has stayed away from the music industry

   1. JCJason Calacanis33:01

      there's a big debate about, uh, training data. You guys have been, I think, the most thoughtful of any company. You've got licensing deals now, FT, et cetera. And, uh, we gotta just be gentle here because you're involved in a New York Times lawsuit you weren't able to settle, I guess, an arrangement with them for training data. How do you think about fairness and fair use? We've had big debates here on the pod. Obviously, your actions are- you know, speak volumes that you're trying to be fair by doing licensing deals. So what- what's your personal position on the rights of artists who create beautiful music, lyrics, books, a- and you taking that and then making a derivative product out of it, and- and then monetizing it, and- and what's fair here, and- and how do we get to a world where, you know, artists can make content in the world and then decide what they want other people to do with it?

   2. SASam Altman33:59

      Yeah.

   3. JCJason Calacanis33:59

      Yeah. And- and- and I'm just curious of your personal belief, because I know you to be a thoughtful person on this, and I know a lot of other people in our industry are not very thoughtful about how they think about content creators.

   4. SASam Altman34:11

      So I think it's very different for different kinds of in-... I mean, look, on unfair use, I think we have a- a very reasonable position under the current law, but I think AI is so different. But for things like art, we'll need to think about them in different ways. But let's say if you go read a bunch of math on the internet and learn how to do math, that, I think seems unobjectionable to most people. And then there's, like, you know, another set of people who might have a different opinion. Well, what if you, like... eh, actually, let me not get into that, just in the interest of not making this answer too long. So I- I think there's, like, one category of people who are like, okay, there's, like, generalized human knowledge. You can kind of, like, go... if you learn that, like, that's- that- that's like open domain or something if you kind of go learn about the Pythagorean theorem. Um, that's one end of the spectrum, and then I think the other extreme end of the spectrum is, um... is art. A- and maybe even, like, more than- more specifically I would say it's, like, doing... it's a system generating art in the style or the likeness of another artist, um, would be kind of the furthest end of that, and then there's many, many cases on the spectrum in between. Uh... I think the conversation has been historically very caught up on training data, but it will increasingly become more about what happens at inference time.

   5. JCJason Calacanis35:41

      Oh.

   6. SASam Altman35:41

      As training data becomes less valuable and the- what the system does, accessing, you know, information in- in context, in real time, or, uh, you know, taking li- like something like that, what happens at inference time will become more debated and- and how the- what the new economic model is there. So if you say, like, uh... if you say, like, create me a song in this- in the style of Taylor Swift, even if the model were never trained on any Taylor Swift songs at all, you can still have a problem, which is it may have read about Taylor Swift. It may know about her themes. Taylor Swift means something, and then- and then the question is, like, should that model, even if it were never trained on any Taylor Swift song whatsoever, be allowed to do that? And if so, um...... how should Taylor get paid?

   7. JCJason Calacanis36:37

      Right.

   8. SASam Altman36:38

      So I think there's an opt-in/opt-out in that case, first of all, and then there's an economic model. Um, staying on the music example, there is something interesting to look at from the historical perspective here, which is, uh, sampling and how the economics around that work.

   9. JCJason Calacanis36:53

      Yes.

   10. SASam Altman36:53

       This is not quite the same thing, but it's like an interesting place to start looking.

   11. DFDavid Friedberg36:56

       Sam, let me just challenge that. What's the difference in the example you're giving of the model learning about things like song structure, tempo, melody, harmony relationships, all the... discovering all the underlying structure that makes music successful and then building new music using training data, and what a human does that listens to lots of music, t-... learns about, and f-... and their brain is processing and building all those same sort of predictive models or those same sort of, uh-

   12. SASam Altman37:26

       Yeah.

   13. DFDavid Friedberg37:26

       ... discoveries or understandings? What's the difference here and w- why, why are you making the case that perhaps artists should be uniquely paid? This is not a sampling situation. You're not... the AI is not outputting, and it's not storing in the model the actual original song.

   14. SASam Altman37:42

       Yeah. I wasn't-

   15. DFDavid Friedberg37:42

       It's learning structure, right? So...

   16. SASam Altman37:44

       I wasn't trying to make-

   17. DFDavid Friedberg37:45

       Yeah.

   18. SASam Altman37:45

       ... that, that point 'cause I agree.

   19. DFDavid Friedberg37:47

       Okay.

   20. SASam Altman37:47

       Like, in the same way that humans are inspired by other humans.

   21. DFDavid Friedberg37:50

       Right.

   22. SASam Altman37:50

       I was saying if you, if you say, "Generate me a song in the style of Taylor Swift."

   23. DFDavid Friedberg37:54

       I see, right. Okay. Well, the prom-

   24. SASam Altman37:55

       Yeah, I think that's like a-

   25. DFDavid Friedberg37:55

       Well, the, well, the prompt leverages some artist, but-

   26. SASam Altman37:58

       I, I think personally that's a different case.

   27. DFDavid Friedberg38:01

       Would you be comfortable asking or would you be comfortable letting the model train itsel-... a music model being trained on the whole corpus of music that humans have created without royalties being paid to the artists that, um, that music is being fed in, and then you're not allowed to ask, you know, artist-specific prompts. You could just say, "Hey, pay me a... play me a, a really cool pop song that's fairly modern about heartbreak, uh, you know, with a female voice."

   28. SASam Altman38:26

       Yeah.

   29. DFDavid Friedberg38:26

       You know.

   30. SASam Altman38:27

       We, we have currently made the decision not to do music, and partly because exactly these questions of where you-
5. 42:02 – 52:23

   AI regulation, UBI in a post-AI world

   1. DSDavid Sacks42:02

      What does it mean when people say, "Regulate AI"?

   2. JCJason Calacanis42:06

      Totally.

   3. DSDavid Sacks42:07

      Sam, what does it... what does that even mean?

   4. DFDavid Friedberg42:09

      And comment on California's new (laughs) proposed regulations-

   5. JCJason Calacanis42:12

      Yeah.

   6. DFDavid Friedberg42:12

      ... as, as well if you, if you're up for it.

   7. SASam Altman42:15

      Uh, I'm concerned. I mean, there's so many proposed regulations-

   8. DFDavid Friedberg42:18

      Yeah.

   9. SASam Altman42:18

      ... but most of the ones I've seen on the California state, things I'm concerned about. I also have a general fear of the states all doing this them- themselves. Um, when people say, "Regulate AI," I don't think they mean one thing. I think there's like... some people are like, "Ban the whole thing." Some people are like, "Don't allow it to be open source, require it to be open source." Um, the thing that I am personally most interested in is I think there will come...... look, I may be wrong about this. I will acknowledge that this is a forward-looking statement, and those are always dangerous to make. But I think there will come a time in the not super distant future, like, you know, we're not talking, like, decades and decades from now, where AI sys- the frontier AI systems are capable of causing significant global harm. And for those kinds of systems, in the same way we have, like, global oversight of nuclear weapons or synthetic bio, or things that can really, like, have a very negative impact way beyond the realm of one country, uh, I would like to see some sort of international agency that is looking at the most powerful systems and ensuring, like, reasonable safety testing. You know, these things are not going to escape and recursively self-improve or whatever.

   10. JCJason Calacanis43:31

       The criticism of this is that you're- you have the resources to cozy up, to lobby, to be involved, and you've been very involved with politicians, and then startups, which you're also passionate about and invest in, um, are not gonna have the ability to resource, uh, and deal with this, and that this regulatory capture, as per our friend, you know, Bill Gurley did a great talk last year about it. So, maybe you could address that head-on. Do- do you feel like-

   11. SASam Altman43:57

       You know, if the- if the line were, "We're only gonna look at models that are trained on computers that cost more than $10 billion, or more than $100 billion, or whatever dollars," I'd be fine with that. There'd be some line that'd be fine. And, uh, I don't think-

   12. JCJason Calacanis44:10

       Oh.

   13. SASam Altman44:10

       ... that puts any regulatory burden on startups.

   14. JCJason Calacanis44:12

       So if you have, like, the- the nuclear raw material to make a nuclear bomb, like there's a small subs- set of people who have that, therefore you use the analogy of, like, a- a nuclear inspectors-

   15. SASam Altman44:22

       Yeah.

   16. JCJason Calacanis44:22

       ... kind of situation.

   17. SASam Altman44:23

       Yeah.

   18. JCJason Calacanis44:23

       I think that- that's interesting. Sax, you have a question?

   19. DFDavid Friedberg44:26

       Well, Chamath, go ahead. You had a follow-up.

   20. SASam Altman44:29

       Can I say one more thing about that?

   21. JCJason Calacanis44:31

       Yeah.

   22. DFDavid Friedberg44:31

       Of course.

   23. SASam Altman44:31

       I- I'd be super nervous about regulatory overreach here. I think we can get this wrong by doing way too much, I th- or even a little too much. I think we can get this wrong by doing not enough. But- but I do think part of... And I... And that, I mean, you know, we have seen regulatory overstepping or capture just get super bad in other areas. Um, and, you know, the- also, maybe nothing will happen, but- but I think it is part of our duty and our mission to, like, talk about what we believe is likely to happen, and what it takes to get that right.

   24. DFDavid Friedberg45:08

       The challenge, Sam, is that we have statute that is meant to protect people, protect society at large. What we're creating, however, is statute that gives the government rights to go in and audit code, to audit business, um, trade secrets. Uh, we've never seen that to this degree before. Basically, the California legislation that's proposed, and some of the federal legislation that's been proposed basically requires the fed- the government to audit a model, to audit software, to audit and review the parameters and the weightings of the model, and then you need their check mark in order to deploy it for commercial or public use. And for me, it just feels like we're trying to rein in the- the- the government agencies for fear, and- and because folks have a hard time understanding this and are scared about the implications of it, they wanna control it.

   25. SASam Altman46:08

       Yeah.

   26. DFDavid Friedberg46:08

       And because they want... And- and the only way to control it is to say, "Give me a right to audit before you can release it."

   27. Yeah, and they're clueless.

   28. As opposed to say...

   29. These people are clueless.

   30. And they're clueless. I mean, the way that the- the stuff is written, you read it, you're, like, gonna pull your hair out 'cause as you know better than anyone, in 12 months, none of this stuff's gonna make sense anyway.
6. 52:23 – 1:05:33

   Sam breaks down how he was fired and re-hired, why he has no equity, dealmaking on behalf of OpenAI, and how he organizes the company

   1. SASam Altman52:23

      part of the productivity.

   2. CPChamath Palihapitiya52:24

      Right.

   3. JCJason Calacanis52:24

      I would like to shift to the gossip part of this.

   4. SASam Altman52:27

      (laughs)

   5. CPChamath Palihapitiya52:27

      Okay.

   6. JCJason Calacanis52:27

      Gossip? What gossip?

   7. SASam Altman52:29

      (laughs)

   8. CPChamath Palihapitiya52:29

      We still haven't gotten to the gossip.

   9. JCJason Calacanis52:29

      Sam, let's go back, let's go back to November. What the flying (censored) happened?

   10. CPChamath Palihapitiya52:34

       (laughs)

   11. SASam Altman52:36

       Um, you know, I, I... If you have specific questions, I'm happy to-

   12. CPChamath Palihapitiya52:41

       (laughs)

   13. SASam Altman52:41

       Maybe I said, maybe I won't, but like-

   14. JCJason Calacanis52:42

       You said you were gonna talk about it at some point, so here's the point. What the hell happened?

   15. SASam Altman52:47

       I, I mean, I-

   16. JCJason Calacanis52:47

       You were fired, you came back. There was palace intrigue. Did somebody stab you in the back?

   17. SASam Altman52:52

       Yeah.

   18. JCJason Calacanis52:52

       Did you find AGI? What's going on? Tell us.

   19. SASam Altman52:55

       Uh-

   20. JCJason Calacanis52:55

       This is a safe space, Sam.

   21. SASam Altman52:57

       (laughs) Um, I was fired. I was... I talked about coming back. I kind of was a little bit unsure at the moment about what I wanted to do 'cause I was very upset. Um, and I realized that I really loved OpenAI and the people and that I would come back, and I kind of... I knew it was gonna be hard. It was even harder than I thought, but I, I kind of was like, "All right, fine." Um, I agreed to come back. Um, the board, like, took a while to figure things out, and then, uh, you know, we were kind of, like, trying to keep the team together and keep doing things for our customers and, uh, you know, sort of started making other plans. Then the board decided to hire a different interim CEO, um, and then everybody... There were many people

   22. DSDavid Sacks53:48

       Oh my gosh. What was, what was that guy's name? He was there for, like, Scaramucci, right? Like-

   23. SASam Altman53:52

       Uh-

   24. DSDavid Sacks53:53

       (laughs)

   25. SASam Altman53:53

       ... 10 days.

   26. JCJason Calacanis53:54

       Em- Em- Emmett's great, and I, I have nothing but good things to say about Emmett-

   27. DSDavid Sacks53:58

       Scaramucci. (laughs) I wasn't here for Scaramucci.

   28. SASam Altman53:59

       ... in that whole process. Um, and then-

   29. JCJason Calacanis54:01

       Where were you when they, um... when you found the news that you'd been fired? Like, well, take me to that moment.

   30. SASam Altman54:06

       I was in Vegas. I was at a hotel room in Vegas for F1 weekend.
7. 1:05:33 – 1:10:38

   Post-interview recap

   1. SASam Altman1:05:33

   2. JCJason Calacanis1:05:33

      Gentlemen, some breaking news here. All those projects, he said, are part of OpenAI. That's something people didn't know before this and a lot of confusion there. Chamath, what was your major takeaway from our hour with Sam?

   3. DSDavid Sacks1:05:47

      I think that these guys are going to be one of the four major companies-

   4. JCJason Calacanis1:05:52

      Okay.

   5. DSDavid Sacks1:05:52

      ... that matter in this whole space. I think that that's clear. I think what's still unclear is where is the economics going to be. He said something very discreet but I thought was important, which is, I think he basically... My interpretation is these models will roughly all be the same, but there's going to be a lot of scaffolding around these models that actually allow you to build these apps. So in many ways, that is like the open source movement. So even if the model itself is never open source, it doesn't much matter because you have to pay for the infrastructure, right? There's a lot of open source software that runs on Amazon. You still pay AWS something. So I think the right way to think about this now is the models will basically be all really good.

   6. JCJason Calacanis1:06:37

      Mm-hmm.

   7. DSDavid Sacks1:06:37

      And then it's all this other stuff that you'll have to pay for.

   8. JCJason Calacanis1:06:40

      The interface, yeah.

   9. DSDavid Sacks1:06:41

      Whoever builds all this other stuff is going to be in a position to build a really good business.

   10. JCJason Calacanis1:06:48

       Freeberg, he talked a lot about reasoning. It seemed like that... He kept going to reasoning and away from the language model. Did you no- did you note that? And anything else that you noted in our hour with him?

   11. DSDavid Sacks1:06:57

       Yeah, I mean, that's a longer conversation because there is a lot of talk about language models eventually evolving to be so generalizable that they can resolve pretty much, like, all intelligent function. And so the language model is the foundational model that, that yields AGI.... but that's all... I think there's a lot of people that have different schools of thought on this and how much-

   12. JCJason Calacanis1:07:19

       Oh, my, my other takeaway, I think, is that the... I think what he also seemed to indicate is, there's, like, so many, like, we're all so enraptured by LLMs but there's so many things other than LLMs that are being baked and rolled by him and by other groups. And I think we have to pay some amount of attention to all those, because that's probably where... And I think, Freyberg, you tried to go there in your question, that's where reasoning will really come from, is this mixture of experts approach. And so you're gonna have to think multi-dimensionally to reason, right? We do that, right? Do I cross the street or not in this point in time? You reason based on all these multi inputs and so there's, there's all these little systems that go into making that decision in your brain. And if you, if you use that as a simple example, there's all this stuff that has to go into making some experience being able to reason intelligently. Sacks, you went right there with the corporate structure, the board. And, uh, he, he, he gave us all a lot more information here. Wha- what are your thoughts on the, "Hey," you know, "the chip stuff and the other stuff I'm working on," that's all part of OpenAI, people just don't realize it. And in that moment and then, you know, your questions to him about equity. Your, your thoughts on, um, that.

   13. DFDavid Friedberg1:08:34

       Um, I'm not sure I was, like, the main guy who asked that question, J-Cal, but, um... (laughs)

   14. JCJason Calacanis1:08:39

       Well, no, you do talk about the, the non-profit, the, the difference between-

   15. DFDavid Friedberg1:08:42

       Well, he added a follow-up question about the-

   16. JCJason Calacanis1:08:42

       ... the non-profit verse that. Yeah, yeah. That, that's what I'm talking about.

   17. DFDavid Friedberg1:08:44

       There clearly was some sort of culture clash on the board-

   18. JCJason Calacanis1:08:47

       Yes.

   19. DFDavid Friedberg1:08:47

       ... between the n- the people who originated from the non-profit world and the people that came from the start-up world.

   20. JCJason Calacanis1:08:51

       And the tech side, yeah.

   21. DFDavid Friedberg1:08:52

       We don't really know more than that, but there clearly was some sort of culture clash. I thought one of the... a couple of the other areas that he drew attention to that were kind of interesting is, he clearly thinks there's a big opportunity on mobile that goes-

   22. JCJason Calacanis1:09:04

       Yes.

   23. DFDavid Friedberg1:09:04

       ... beyond just, like, having, you know, a ChatGPT app on your phone or maybe even having, like, a Siri on your phone. There's clearly something bigger there, he doesn't know exactly what it is, but it's gonna require more inputs. It's that, you know, personal assistant that's seeing everything around you and helping you.

   24. JCJason Calacanis1:09:21

       That was a really... I think that's a great insight, David, because he was talking about, "Hey, I'm looking for a senior team member who can push back on me and understands all contexts." I thought that was, like, a very interesting to think about-

   25. DFDavid Friedberg1:09:32

       Yeah, he's talking about an executive assistant or an assistant that's... it has executive function as opposed to being, like, just an alter ego-

   26. JCJason Calacanis1:09:41

       Yes.

   27. DFDavid Friedberg1:09:41

       ... for you or what he called a sycophant. That's kind of interesting.

   28. JCJason Calacanis1:09:44

       I thought that was interesting, yeah.

   29. DFDavid Friedberg1:09:45

       Yeah. And clearly, he thinks there's a big opportunity in biology and scientific discovery.

   30. DSDavid Sacks1:09:50

       After the break, I think we should talk about AlphaFold 3, it was just announced today, so-
8. 1:10:38 – 1:19:06

   All-In Summit announcements, college protests

   1. JCJason Calacanis1:10:38

      All right. Welcome back everybody. Second half of the show, great guest Sam Altman. Thanks for coming on the pod. We've got a bunch of news on the docket, so let's get started. Freyberg, you told me I could give some names of, uh, the guests that we booked for the All-In Summit.

   2. DSDavid Sacks1:10:53

      I did not.

   3. JCJason Calacanis1:10:54

      You did. You've said each week, every week, that I get to say some names.

   4. DFDavid Friedberg1:10:59

      (laughs)

   5. DSDavid Sacks1:10:59

      I did not say that. I did not. I appreciate your interest in the All-In Summit's lineup, but we do not yet have, uh, enough critical mass, uh-

   6. JCJason Calacanis1:11:08

      Okay.

   7. DSDavid Sacks1:11:08

      ... to feel like we should go out there.

   8. JCJason Calacanis1:11:09

      Well, uh, I am a loose cannon, so I will announce-

   9. DFDavid Friedberg1:11:13

      (laughs)

   10. JCJason Calacanis1:11:13

       ... my two guests and, uh, I created the summit and you took it from me, so... and done a great job. I will announce my guests, I don't care what your opinion is.

   11. DSDavid Sacks1:11:21

       (laughs)

   12. JCJason Calacanis1:11:22

       I have booked two guests for the summit and it's gonna be sold out. Look at these two guests I booked. For the third time coming back to the summit, our guy Elon Musk will be there. Hopefully in person. If not, you know, from 40,000 feet on Starlink connection, wherever he is in the world. And for the first time, our friend Mark Cuban will be coming. And so two great guests for you to look forward to. But Freyberg's got like a thousand guests coming. He'll tell you when it's, like, 48 hours before the conference. But yeah, two great guests coming.

   13. DFDavid Friedberg1:11:51

       Wait, speaking of billionaires who are coming, isn't (beep) coming too?

   14. JCJason Calacanis1:11:54

       Yes, (beep) coming. Yes, he's booked.

   15. DFDavid Friedberg1:11:56

       So we have three billionaires coming.

   16. JCJason Calacanis1:11:58

       Three billionaires, yes.

   17. DFDavid Friedberg1:11:59

       (beep)

   18. DSDavid Sacks1:12:00

       Hasn't fully confirmed, so don't-

   19. JCJason Calacanis1:12:01

       Okay, well, we're gonna say it anyway.

   20. DFDavid Friedberg1:12:02

       (beep)

   21. JCJason Calacanis1:12:03

       ... has penciled in and that's it.

   22. DSDavid Sacks1:12:04

       Don't say it and he'll back out.

   23. JCJason Calacanis1:12:05

       We'll say penciled. Yeah, don't back out.

   24. DSDavid Sacks1:12:07

       This is going to be catnip for all these protest organizers, like, if you have to pick one place-

   25. JCJason Calacanis1:12:11

       Oh, God. Do not poke the bear.

   26. DFDavid Friedberg1:12:13

       Well, by the way, speaking of updates-

   27. JCJason Calacanis1:12:15

       Oh.

   28. DFDavid Friedberg1:12:15

       ... what did you guys think of the bottle for the All-In Tequila?

   29. JCJason Calacanis1:12:19

       Ooh.

   30. DSDavid Sacks1:12:19

       Oh, beautiful.

Episode duration: 1:43:02