Lenny's PodcastOpenAI’s Head of ChatGPT: We’re entering a new era of AI (again) | Tibo Sottiaux
EVERY SPOKEN WORD
45 min read · 8,672 words- 0:00 – 1:12
Introduction to Tibo Sottiaux
- TSTibo Sottiaux
Often when I look at what people are building out there, it's just like you're not quite getting it. Like, you know, if you were just, like, pushing yourself and just really imagining, like, all of this being roughly ten times better than it is today, you know, like in a year, but you would build in a different way.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
What do you think people aren't pricing in in terms of where things are going?
- TSTibo Sottiaux
The majority of actions on the internet will be taken by agents. If you want your product to be successful for agents, you have to build, you know, for a certain level of scale.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
How many agents do you find yourself running in parallel, just, uh, in the, in kind of your day-to-day work?
- TSTibo Sottiaux
As I'm pushing the frontier, I find myself, like, building larger and larger teams of agents. And then when we have the next breakthrough with models, like, suddenly it's just a kind of like, oh well, you know, a bigger agent can just do all of it. And so I kind of shrink the team again, and then it just kind of goes through this expansion and shrinking expansion.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
It kind of makes me think about there's this whole loops thing and then this whole graphs thing.
- TSTibo Sottiaux
Having to set up and fiddle with your loops is something that maybe people got excited about, but I don't think this is the way that it's going to work. Over time, you just want a system that learns. You don't want to necessarily think about, "Oh, I just think I'm gonna loop it exactly this way in order to get results."
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Do you think there's still more radical change happening to how we work?
- TSTibo Sottiaux
It's going to continue to change quite radically. Even today, it still feels, like, a bit clunky, and I think it will feel clunky until it isn't.
- 1:12 – 3:10
How Tibo uses AI in his daily work
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Tibo, thank you for doing this.
- TSTibo Sottiaux
Yeah. Thanks for having me [laughs] . Of course.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Uh-
- TSTibo Sottiaux
Nice room
- LRLenny Rachitsky
... you launched, uh, a ton of stuff today. How, how did you sleep? How are you sleeping? Are you doing all right?
- TSTibo Sottiaux
I'm doing great. I'm fortunate to have a very good team.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Mm-hmm.
- TSTibo Sottiaux
So while I sleep, they were awake most of the night. We have this amazing room, uh, at the office called the library, which we completely repurposed as, like, a mega war room, and the vibes in there are just immaculate. Uh, people were there until, like, very, very late.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
So you've been a longtime engineer. Are you, are you coding at all anymore? Are you shipping PRs? Are you mostly, like, in docs and, and meetings now?
- TSTibo Sottiaux
What is coding?
- LRLenny Rachitsky
[laughs] Exactly. Yeah. Are you shipping PRs? I don't know. Is that, is that-
- TSTibo Sottiaux
Uh, yeah, yeah. Merg-merging some code every once in a while. Technically, like, a lot of code is getting written for me to do all sorts of kinds of, like, analysis. Like, you know, understand, like, trends, understand the business, understand the next feature, you know, how well our previous launches are doing. A lot of code is written by Codex for that. You know, I'm obviously not writing it by hand anymore. Occasionally at the, during the weekends, I will have, like, a little therapeutic moment where I do a little LeetCode just by hand. Um, but that's the, the only actual hands coding that I do.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
How many agents do you find yourself running in parallel, just, uh, in the, in kind of your day-to-day work?
- TSTibo Sottiaux
I used to run a lot more in parallel, and then we were, you know, fortunate enough to get, um, a breakthrough at Ultra Fast. And so now, you know, I feel like, you know, I'm able to be in the flow again, and so it's just having a faster agent helps me a lot. I'm excited that we're getting, you know, 6.1, so Ultra Fast out there soon. Um, and then, yeah, I think it, it, it sort of varies. Um, as I'm kind of, like, pushing the frontier, I find myself, like, you know, building larger and larger teams of agents. And then when we have the next breakthrough with models, like, suddenly it's just a kind of like, oh, well, you know, a bigger agent can just do all of it and, like, keep everything in memory and learn. And so I kind of shrink the team again, and then it just kind of
- 3:10 – 6:15
The vision for always-on AI agents
- TSTibo Sottiaux
goes through this expansion and shrinking expansion.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Hmm, can, can you say more about that? It kind of makes me think about there's this whole loops thing and then this whole graphs thing. Is this, like, an evolution of that in some way, or?
- TSTibo Sottiaux
I think, like, having to set up and fiddle with your loops and, you know, figuring that out is something that, you know, maybe people got excited about, but I don't think this is the way that it's going to work. I think the way that it's going to work is, uh, well, how we're positioning and, and what we're shipping with Dots, where you have an incredibly smart agent that works twenty four/seven, understands your goals, understands your preferences, learns from feedback. Um, and you know, it's like what we launched is, like, not perfect. I will learn very much from, you know, making this available to our pro users, but over time, you just want a system that learns from, you know, what you want to achieve. You don't want to necessarily think about, "Oh, I was just thinking I've got to loop it exactly this way in order to get results."
- LRLenny Rachitsky
So right now there's Codex, there's ChatGPT Work, there's ChatGPT Consumer, there's Dots. What I'm hearing is you think we're heading towards Dots kind of being the primary way you talk to AI, and that kicks off all these other things?
- TSTibo Sottiaux
Yeah, I think fundamentally, if you take a step back and, you know, whether it's Dots or not, um, it's all about breaking free from the technology, um, and having this sort of like permanent active intelligence that knows, you know, everything it needs to do and is available through any client, any screen. You can call it. You know, like maybe you walk into a meeting room, it shows up in the meeting, it takes notes. You know, you pick it back up on email. Um, and then, you know, you text it if you need it. It's not that, you know, you need to be glued to a laptop or, you know, you're, like, always on your phone. It's just like it's available when you need it, and it also, like, gets out of the way when you don't need it. And I can't wait, you know, for that to sort of like come to fruition because I think, like, just carrying your laptop as, like, this brick around everywhere is just like, you know, you're kind of, like, tied to the technology instead of the technology working for you.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
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- 6:15 – 7:32
How AI will continue to change work
- LRLenny Rachitsky
I was gonna ask you about this. It feels like so much has changed in how we worked over the past, like, two years. In two years, especially engineers, but a lot of roles have just the role-- Your day-to-day life has changed significantly, and I'm curious if you think we're kind of settling into what work will look like in the next, I don't know, five years. Let's say two years. That feels way too far to think about. Or do you think there's still more radical change happening to how we work and-
- TSTibo Sottiaux
Oh, I think it's going to continue to change quite radically. Even today, you know, it does seem like the technology is finally coming together with voice, uh, you know, multimodal inputs, outputs, but it still feels, like, a bit clunky, and I think it will feel clunky until it isn't, and then you're just like, "Wow," you know? It's like I can just talk to this thing the same way that we're talking right now. It just remembers things perfectly. If I want to, you know, ideate and brainstorm, I can just like, you know, squiggle a thing. I have this collaborative surface. You know, this is what we launched with ChatGPT Space. It's like, you know, the very start of that. You know, you can imagine we have, like, a shared whiteboard. We can collaborate between humans, between agents, and I think it's going to sort of like transcend conversations, transcend, you know, like a lot of the clients that you have today. And like, none of this is just really working today, right? So I think, like, we're gonna go through this big new transformation.
- 7:32 – 8:20
Bringing Codex, ChatGPT, and Dots together
- LRLenny Rachitsky
What I'm hearing here is Dots is a big part of that future, this AI system that just kind of does e-everything for you, and you don't have to think about Codex versus ChatGPT and-
- TSTibo Sottiaux
Yes, and for Codex and ChatGPT, we're going to merge, uh, like the, the... We have, we have chat, we have the work toggle. Like, you know, we heard the f-feedback loud and clear. Like, you know, people love the capability in work, but then also, you know, you're like sometimes you want to use chat because it's a little bit faster and, you know, more pleasant to use. And so we're, we're merging that. We're reducing that complexity. Eventually, we will ship all of the capa-capabilities of Dots, you know, straight into ChatGPT as well, and, you know, lift the floor, uh, for like our one point two billion users, which, you know, at that time we'll see, like, how many we have. Um, and we want it to be really, really seamless. One thing that I'm very excited with, with Dots is, like, they don't have a model picker. There's just no configuration. You just talk to it. Like, the only thing that you have to configure is, like, which channels you want to, uh,
- 8:20 – 9:02
The sci-fi inspiration behind the technology
- TSTibo Sottiaux
talk to.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
It feels very much like the Her kind of vision of the world. I don't know. Do you think about that movie much? Just this idea of the-
- TSTibo Sottiaux
I watched it once. [laughs] Yeah. I think it's, it's, it's interesting, you know, to, to, to think about, you know, maybe more... What, what I think about more is like, you know, sci-fi from, from, you know, thirty, forty years ago, and like how visionary it was at that time.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Is there a specific sci-fi you think about that's most influenced you?
- TSTibo Sottiaux
Like, you know, books like Neuromancer and then, you know, the original, like, Star Trek. Um, you know, I think about that a lot.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Mm.
- TSTibo Sottiaux
And there's something about Star Trek which I think, you know, was like-- It was this technology that was, like, very, very useful. Obviously, like, you know, you're able to just, like, talk to a computer and, like, it does things for you. Like, you can talk to your spaceship and it just moves,
- 9:02 – 10:13
Building AI with the community
- TSTibo Sottiaux
right? It's like this is getting real, you know? Like, we're entering that era.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
So we're recording this in front of a, a live audience. There was this line out the door, just people waiting to see you, to hear from you. How do you just think about this, I don't know, role you're in, this responsibility you have to build what you're building and the impact it has on people's lives? I don't know. Just what does that feel like? How do you think about that?
- TSTibo Sottiaux
I think it's very important to be part of a community and to build with people. It's like, in a way, we're discovering this technology and, like, what it can do together. Um, and so every time I, you know, talk to people, I'm like-- I'm kind of, like, reminded of y-you're doing this thing which I hadn't even anticipated. You know, it's impacting your life in a c-certain way, and it's impacted like, you know, this other person's life, and then just, like, all together. It's both very humbling, very inspiring, and I think very necessary in order to build something that is truly useful for humans. I, I don't know how we would do it without the community.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
That's something I hear a lot with people building AI, is they don't know what it is until they've launched it and they see how people use it, see what emerges, and it feels like kind of what you're saying, is just build it with people-
- TSTibo Sottiaux
Yeah
- LRLenny Rachitsky
... versus, like, "Here's the vision. We've got it figured out."
- TSTibo Sottiaux
Even the Twitter community has been, uh, very nice-
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Mm-hmm
- TSTibo Sottiaux
... uh, in general. Yeah.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
You're very good at Twitter. [chuckles] Kind of, uh, antagonistic sometimes, but very
- 10:13 – 11:34
Understanding the Dots structure
- LRLenny Rachitsky
good. How do you, how do you find time to even tweet? I don't understand how someone in your role has time to sit on Twitter, tweet, reply.
- TSTibo Sottiaux
I spend like maybe half an hour per day-
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Wow, okay
- TSTibo Sottiaux
... just scrolling and then doing something when I feel inspired and I have something interesting to say. Often, it just comes, like, in the moment.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Yeah. Perfect Twitter skill.
- TSTibo Sottiaux
And I have a, um... We haven't released a Dot, uh, the, the, the team Dots yet, but, you know, today we're releasing the primary Dot which you can configure, you can get used to, like, what a Dot can do, connect it to your apps. Um, but we'll release, uh, the ability to create more than one. And so I have one that's responsible for Twitter.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Okay. Say more about that. So right now everyone gets one Dot.
- TSTibo Sottiaux
Yeah.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Uh, right now they can't add more Dots.
- TSTibo Sottiaux
That's right.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
They will be able to have many Dots. Talk about kind of where that's going.
- TSTibo Sottiaux
Yeah. So we wanted to start with one, the primary Dot, which is the one that, you know, you'll probably also text, that, you know, learns your preferences most deeply as well and kind of see, like, you know, what people do with it, um, see how we need to tune the system, you know, learn by working with the community. And then very quickly, uh, soon you'll be able to add, you know, a second one, a third one, a fourth one, as many as you need to create, like, your virtual team. And then you can give them specific roles, right? It's like, it's not... I don't find it absolutely necessary, but sometimes I have, like, a thing that is-- requires quite a bit of work, you know, such as, like, monitoring, like, Twitter for me, and then, you know, that's, like, a thing. It's just like, okay, this will be, like, so much work that it's, like, the work of an entire Dot.
- 11:34 – 13:39
OpenAI’s open ecosystem and plugin revenue sharing
- TSTibo Sottiaux
Um, and then, you know, you can have a couple of those.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
So if you think about all the launches that happened today, it feels like Dots may be, like, the sexiest. I'm curious if there's something that you think is not getting the attention it probably deserves that will become really, really important down the road that's kind of-- people are sleeping on, that's, like, a vision-
- TSTibo Sottiaux
Yeah. Yeah, yeah
- LRLenny Rachitsky
... something really important.
- TSTibo Sottiaux
I think the sleeper hit is, uh, ecosystem, so opening it all up, uh, and the commitment, the deep commitment we have towards opening it all up. So we have signed in with ChatGPT 16 partners. Very, very proud of that. Like, we started that, like, really, it was sort of like in the moment last year. Um, I was talking to creators of Pi and OpenCode, and it was like, "Of course, you know, you should just be able to use the Codex sign-on and then, you know, use the usage," and then usually we kind of like shook hands, you know, like virtually. We're like, you know, it's just like use this, this, uh, this auth, um, and then, you know, kind of trust you to not do anything shady. You know, and that grew. Obviously, that became quite popular and then, you know, now we made it, you know, an actual thing that we support with many, many partners. Um, and I'm excited to grow that very quickly. You know, on the other side as well is, like, opening up- All of the infrastructure and how we build for ChatGPT, you know, with plugin extensions, also plugin discovery, and just allowing, you know, everyone to ship something to, like, maybe 1.2 billion users, right? You know, and benefiting from that distribution. And we also have shared economics, um, that we didn't actually talk, uh, in the keynote, but, you know, we will pay, you know, uh, our plugins that are, uh, popular and, you know, are seeing a lot of usage. Uh, they're going to get part of, like, the, the revenue share as well. Uh, and so I think this commitment towards an open ecosystem is going to be very exciting.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
That's amazing. Uh, okay, so as an example, so say Notion, somebody's using the Notion plugin or the Figma plugin within, uh, ChatGPT Work. Notion, Figma make money from people using it within the app.
- TSTibo Sottiaux
Yes. So, um, we have, you know, all these subscribers that use ChatGPT, um, they get, like, you know, a certain amount of usage, and then when they have that, they, when, when their users use that usage with the plugin or within the other product when they use sign-in with ChatGPT, um, you know, we will have, like, some shared economics with them where they will get remunerated.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
One of the,
- 13:39 – 14:39
How plugins get discovered and recommended
- LRLenny Rachitsky
I don't know, things I think that gets people excited about plugins and ecosystems is distribution platforms, ways to kind of get out there.
- TSTibo Sottiaux
Mm-hmm.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
People discover my app, it blows up. Do you have any advice for people that want their plugins to, you know, bubble up to get discovered?
- TSTibo Sottiaux
Build a good plugin.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Yeah.
- TSTibo Sottiaux
The way that it works, and we'll obviously tune, uh, the system, but we look at retention, uh, numbers.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Mm.
- TSTibo Sottiaux
Uh, we look at, um, you know, how successful the plugin, the quality, and then, you know, that's what we then start to recommend to users, uh, in conversations. And so your plugin can just like, you know, get recommended to, like, you know, a significant slice of users. Obviously, if your plugin is not quite good, it will stop being recommended, right?
- LRLenny Rachitsky
That's amazing that you're looking at retention of people using that plugin.
- TSTibo Sottiaux
That's right. Is it, is it actually adding utility? Is it, you know, enabling ChatGPT to do something else?
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Got it. So it's, it's not so much an AEO kind of get the right words and get people writing about you, it's people using it consistently, sticking with it-
- TSTibo Sottiaux
That's right
- LRLenny Rachitsky
... I think. Okay, so you think that's kind of the sleeper hit that's gonna become a big deal. And I know this is kind of the second attempt. You guys had an app marketplace that this one is the right one. [laughs] Okay, this is,
- 14:39 – 16:20
The research behind Dots
- LRLenny Rachitsky
this one's gonna work. Maybe going back to Dots, 'cause it feels like that's a big part of the vision and the future. When did you guys start working on this? Obviously, there was an OpenClaw, a big OpenClaw moment. You guys -- Peter joined, and there, uh, there's a foundation, uh, and then Grok Bot, Muse, and Instinct and all these things. I guess how long have you guys been working on it? What, why'd it take so long for you guys to get something out?
- TSTibo Sottiaux
Do you remember the Codex Clad?
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Yeah, the first-
- TSTibo Sottiaux
Yeah.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Uh, yeah.
- TSTibo Sottiaux
That was like a year ago, right? And, uh, if you look back at Codex Clad and you look at the little animation that we used, uh, I think that was the inspiration for Grok Bot. Um-
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Mm-hmm. [laughs]
- TSTibo Sottiaux
Yeah. It's just like very, very similar. Eerily similar, I would say. But, you know, seriously, like on the research, long, persistent, long horizon tasks, this is something that we've worked on, you know, for more than two years. Memory systems that stay coherent, you know, like roughly the same amount of time. We launched a lot of that straight into ChatGPT. I think, you know, people just really enjoy that ChatGPT gets to know, like, you know, so much relevant information about you. So many people I talk to have like an anecdote of like, "Hey, you know, I fell ill," and you know, ChatGPT remembered actually like, "You know, I had this barbecue, uh, and you know, I had like lime and I was like making tequila and like, you know, it was just like probably like this burn that I have on my hand is actually like this lime, you know, it's like a sunburn." And you're just like, "How did it know that?" And it's like, you know, it's just that memory works very, very well in ChatGPT and so we've put a lot of research in that. And you know, all of this coming together on top of like the Codex harness and also the ability to just like run twenty-four/seven with, you know, good productivity, that's what we launched with Dots and so it's the work of like many, many months. And then one of the important things was also getting safety and security right. You know, this is also why we launched with Astra. It's our safest, most aligned model and like a lot more, uh, effort went into like making Dots like, you know, just really safe and secure.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
A question
- 16:20 – 17:25
Where humans will remain valuable
- LRLenny Rachitsky
I like to ask people who come on the podcast is where do you think human brains will continue to be valuable over time? Where do you find yourself being necessary in the work that happens versus where AI is taking on more and more? Where do you think human brains will continue to be useful, most useful over time?
- TSTibo Sottiaux
Yes. I think this is very much a function of how we build the technology and the way that we design everything at OpenAI is like to put humans at the center of it and build it as extensions of humans, of, of, of your will and your taste, and so just really be like this super empowering thing. Um, I think as long as we continue to do that and it kind of like enables you to just take whatever you wanted to do and, you know, your creativity and your taste and sort of like, you know, expand that, you know, in, in a way that feels like awesome in the moment is just a really just artistic tool, right? And we may, we may not have coders anymore, but we have more builders than ever and I think there's something that's going to remain like, you know, deeply human about that. Like humans want to learn and see, you know, what other humans are building and, you know, I'm like much more interested. Like I'm here, I'm, you know, I'm not talking to Dot, you know, I'm talking to you, right? I think that will remain
- 17:25 – 18:55
Agent fatigue, loneliness, and context switching
- TSTibo Sottiaux
true for like a very, very long time.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
One of the things that's emerged with engineers especially is in, in how their lives have changed is there's a lot more context switching. There's kind of this trend of loneliness that has emerged where they're talking to agents all day instead of other humans. I'm curious how much you think about just like that part of the, of the impact AI has on people's lives and just how you might... Is there solutions to that? Is there stuff you think about to make that less annoying?
- TSTibo Sottiaux
Yes, all the time. Reducing, you know, configuration fatigue is, you know, one. Um, reducing the fact that talking to an agent is like sort of like a solo adventure and you just have this, you know, conversation just with your one agent and then, you know, you have like many and then you're delegating so many things. A lot of things are gonna come together to make it a, um, much more delightful and something that I spend a lot of time, the team spend a lot of time thinking about. So I think, you know, for me the ideal way to get things done is, you know, would be like to just have it in your physical space. You know, we're just having conversation like we have now. Uh, it's able to sort of like, you know, observe, you know, like here are the ideas that we have. We can, you know, jot something down on a white paper, uh, on a, on a paper. You know, it can maybe like, you know, take that and, you know, start building in the background and then you're like, you know, actually I have another idea and it's just like it starts building another thing. You just project it on a screen and then you just talk to it and it's just involved in a conversation, you know, with other humans and you don't have this fatigue of like having to be like, you know, on this like screen and you're just like, you know, thinking about prompting. It just like becomes like supernatural. That's what we're trending towards, you know. I think- We didn't fully get there today, but, you know, we'll get there in the future.
- 18:55 – 20:09
The pressure to do more with AI
- LRLenny Rachitsky
One of the other kind of downsides that's emerged along those lines is just this kind of pressure to do more because we can do more. Everyone's just like, "Come on, run 30 agents at once. Why aren't you shipping more?" Everyone's shipping more. Do you think that's solvable? Do you think that's just kind of, I don't know, human nature, we can do more, let's do more from there?
- TSTibo Sottiaux
I think we, we, we, we heard Sam as well, you know, about the promise of, of this as well, which is reduce the noise and, you know, allow you to spend attention where you want to spend attention and, you know, having like all these things that, you know, like are maybe, you know, maybe important and maybe not important, but they're kind of vying for your attention and it's just sort of like tone that down a bit and, you know, just get you to focus on, on, on the things. I find it remarkable like every time I go on a holiday and, you know, I, I, I take that one week, uh, to just fully disconnect, like, you know, I start to think in like different and more creative ways, and I'm very eager to see like, you know, can we bring that? You know, can we just make this your day to day? Like, you know, maybe you need fewer meetings. You know, maybe you don't need, you know, to do as much and, you know, you would actually be more productive if you're like, you know, better rested. And so, you know, we will have to, you know, I think as an industry, figure that out. Um, but I think that's the promise of AI and it's not, you know, just one more prompt, you know, per second.
- 20:09 – 21:42
An agent that spotted a production outage before a live demo
- LRLenny Rachitsky
There's a bot that I'm building right now that's kind of this energy audit bot that watches my calendar and asks me just like, "Was this giving you energy? Taking away energy? Is this something someone else could have done?" I feel like, you know, AI should be like, "Hey, Lenny, maybe, maybe you can cut out these things so you could be a happier person." Is there anything you've done really interestingly with AI recently that's just like a really cool use case of, "Wow, that really was amazing. That blew my mind," or someone you've heard?
- TSTibo Sottiaux
Oh, it was like something cool because the, the live demo just failed, right, you know, in front of everyone. Uh, so there was like, "Okay, well that's not cool." But actually, uh, my, my, my Dot was, you know, it's like realized, uh, I was, you know, at DevDay, like, you know, we have ChatGPT production, um, went down, and so it pinged me five minutes before the live demo, which was actually [laughs] quite stressful because it was like, "Hey, production is down." And, uh, it's like, "Oh, well, you know," it's like, "do you want me to try and fix it?" And I'm like, um, "I don't think you're there yet, you know, little Dot, but, you know, thank you for trying." And then, you know, then, you know, I got in touch with like the engineering teams and we started to look, you know, as, as what was going on and, you know, they-- it's, like, fixed by now. But having this thing that just understands, like, okay, there's a pretty important thing happening. It's called DevDay. There's like this production system. There's a live demo. It's probably using this production system, so these two are-- things are connected, and this is happening in five minutes, so I should ping him because, like, he probably wants to know about it. I think that's quite remarkable.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
That is remarkable. Wow. So it just knew that this was coming and told you, and I love that it wanted to fix it, and you were like, "Not quite. You're not quite there yet."
- TSTibo Sottiaux
I don't think it's like, you know, "Please go impress me," but, you know, that would have
- 21:42 – 23:25
Agent guardrails and connecting multiple devices
- TSTibo Sottiaux
been a better story.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
How do you feel about just giving access to all these things? I don't know, like does, does it have access to the production code base and like, you know...
- TSTibo Sottiaux
It has, uh, access to, uh, some, some of production systems with guardrails. Um, you know, so we, we built-- We talked about specialist Dots, but specialist Dots, you know, just like operate with additional guardr- uh, guardrails, additional monitoring, um, and then, you know, on their own hardware. So we actually run some on Mac Minis. The fundamental difference in the way that we've built Dots is like the harness does not run on the machine, you know. And then this is like, maybe people have not realized is like it can connect to as many devices as you want. So it has its own computer. You can actually connect it to your own laptop as well. Over time, you might connect it to like 10 different devices and it can control it all, a little bit like an octopus.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
So you're basically talking to your Dot. It's living in some VM somewhere, and it can-
- TSTibo Sottiaux
Yeah. Might be a VM, might not be a VM. It's just like it's a thing, you know, and it can connect to many devices.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
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- 23:25 – 25:56
The skills becoming more valuable in the AI era
- LRLenny Rachitsky
So you're really hiring a lot. I know you're hiring a lot. In your interviewing, what have you seen as skills that are kind of trending up in what you look for that is more and more important in people being successful now? And what skills do you find are trending down that are just like, "Okay, we don't need that as much"?
- TSTibo Sottiaux
Yeah. I would say like a skill that is trending down is typing fast. Uh, that is not that useful anymore. Skills that are trending up is, you know, just great taste, um, thinking about the user, connecting to the audience that you're building for. Um, a lot of ex-founders are incredibly successful right now, or like, you know, just like repeat founders. We're also finding this, like, when we're hiring at OpenAI is like, you know, we have a lot of founders. I think we have more than 120 XYZ founders-
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Wow
- TSTibo Sottiaux
... currently at OpenAI, so it's like this mega startup. And I think just this, um, this passion and this envy to build something that matters and then know what good looks like is more important than ever.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
I've been arguing for a long time that PMs are kind of gonna thrive in this time because that's basically the job of a PM. Uh, you know, they're like, "What should we build?" Help someone build it, and then, "Is this right? Is this great?" And iterate. So, uh, I don't know. Do you-
- TSTibo Sottiaux
I agree with that.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Yeah. All right. I-
- TSTibo Sottiaux
Also, roles are blurring, so you know, you might, you might have been, you know, only into design or only an engineer and, um, you know, it felt always a little bit uncomfortable, but you know, now it's just like, it's your time to shine.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Do you miss the engineering part of the job? I, I was an engineer back in the day. I was an engineer for 10 years, little did you know. And you know, there's this flow state, there's this beauty of just building and just seeing it work and not work and-
- TSTibo Sottiaux
Yeah
- LRLenny Rachitsky
You kind of miss that at all or are you just like, "Okay, this is my old life"?
- TSTibo Sottiaux
I, um, I, I missed it for, for a while, and then now with, you know, really fast speeds, I'm finding that back. Uh, and so I'm, like, really excited to democratize that, uh, as much, as much as possible. It will take a while for it to be, like, you know, absolutely ubiquitous, right, and, like, you know, available to, like, more than a billion users. But now, you know, with, with ultra-fast speeds, like, we're able to achieve it for a 6-1 sole. It's like, you know, it costs roughly the same as Astra. And so the progress there is, like, quite astonishing. You know, even, even for us internally, we're like, "Wow, you know, we can do these things [chuckles] also because we are using Astra and we're finding, you know, like, we, we can push it super far." And when you have those speeds and especially when you can be able to, like, voice control it, you know, you kind of get back into this, like, really creative state of mind and, like, this flow. It is different from the flow of the pis- the past, um, but I don't miss it.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Yeah, it's like your last two launch videos, just people kind of standing around talking to their AI and just cooking or-
- TSTibo Sottiaux
That's right
- LRLenny Rachitsky
... sitting on a lounge chair.
- 25:56 – 27:18
Advice for people early in their careers
- TSTibo Sottiaux
Yeah.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
I asked people while I was kind of walking around the, the event what to ask you, and one thing that came up a few times is advice for new grads, kind of people junior in their career. I think a lot of people look up to you and they want to be the next Tibo. What advice do you have for folks kind of early in their career in terms of what to work on, what skills to build, what to do?
- TSTibo Sottiaux
Yeah. I think the next Tibo is already at OpenAI. Uh, his name is Ahmed Ibrahim. I love working with him. He was a new grad, uh, when he was hired at OpenAI. He's now responsible for all of OpenAI compute fleet and applied, uh, which is a massive, massive responsibility, uh, and built a lot of the Codex harness. And the thing that has made Ahmed, um, really stand out and successful is just his... He's incredibly kind. He's incredibly collaborative and always, you know, tries to solve the problem that is, like, really important, um, but, like, in a way that, you know, he's not putting himself first. And he is just a sponge. He's, like, learning so fast and learning about everything and, you know, using all of the latest technology to, you know, learn at, you know, speeds I haven't seen before. Um, and so he just in the span of, like, you know, a couple of months and, and, and a year, you know, it's like his progress, uh, at the company was just absolutely fascinating to see. Uh, and he's now someone I trust a ton, uh, in doing, like, you know, the, the, the most gnarly launches at OpenAI.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
All right, I gotta get him on the podcast.
- TSTibo Sottiaux
[laughs] You should, you should.
- 27:18 – 28:59
How teams build and ship inside OpenAI
- LRLenny Rachitsky
So kind of thinking about how things work at OpenAI, what would surprise people about what it's like to work inside OpenAI? From the outside, it feels like it's just, like, constant shipping code. Things are kind of, like, you know, chaotic but awesome. I don't know. What would surprise people about what it's like inside at OpenAI?
- TSTibo Sottiaux
I don't know if that's surprising, but it is, you know, as I said, a lot of ex-founders, um, doing a lot of bottoms-up, you know, very exciting, uh, ideas. You know, for example, Decisions API, you know, came together very quickly. We realized, like, we have a really good model with Luna. Uh, we can just do some, you know, constraint sampling and then, you know, have it, you know, shipped as, like, a different shape to the responses API. And then, um, you know, when we do that, uh, it, you know, it's, like, it's faster and it's quite delightful so for some cases. And it's just if you were to, like, [chuckles] peel under the hood, you realize, like, okay, there's this Slack channel that came together. Um, you know, initially it was, like, four people kind of hacking on it on a weekend, and then it was made ac- accessible as, like, you know, company food, and then people got excited, started to build things, and you're like, "Oh, this is, you know, we can support visual inputs. Like, this is, you know, even better than whatever is out there." And then, you know, people get more and more excited. People start pitching in in a way that is, like, you know, feels completely unstructured. And then, um, you know, take it all the way and, like, you know, ship something. And then, uh, we try to hold, like, a high bar for, you know, the quality and then, you know, stop things, you know, before they go out or, like, you know, maybe they need a little bit more baking. There's many more things that, you know, we were maybe going to ship today at DevDay, and then we were like, "Okay, like, I think this is a lot already. [chuckles] Let's kind of hold it back a little bit and, you know, space it out so we'll have more launches next week and, and, and, and the week after." But it's just this incredible, like, bottoms-up energy and then, you know, people kind of assuming roles to kind of channel that in
- 28:59 – 30:45
Autonomy, trust, and learning from mistakes
- TSTibo Sottiaux
productive ways.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Something that's very clear and unique about OpenAI is it feels like you have a lot of autonomy. You're just, like, pressing the reset button whenever you want. You're just saying things on Twitter. Uh, it feels like a really unique culture where you have a lot of autonomy, and I imagine that comes with a lot of trust.
- TSTibo Sottiaux
Yeah.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Maybe speak to just how that... 'Cause it feels like that's an advantage at OpenAI that allows you to move faster, just that cultural philosophy.
- TSTibo Sottiaux
You get a lot of autonomy and then, you know, you have to just own up to it. So, you know, we just kind of trust people to make great choices and then, you know, when things go wrong, uh, you know, fix, fix it quickly or, you know, learn from the mistake. So far, so good. You know, it's, it's just really worked as a very empowering, um, environment. It is true that I can press the, the reset button whenever, you know, is necessary and whenever it feels right, and, you know, that's like, that's a privilege. Uh, and also it allows me to, you know, just really be close to the community in ways that I think, you know, would not be otherwise possible, right? I don't have to run it, you know, through an echelon of approvals.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
You said sometimes people screw up. Is there something you screwed up in that, in that, I don't know, the, the amount of autonomy and trust you have, something you messed up?
- TSTibo Sottiaux
Yes. I, I think at times, um, I could have, you know, made teams, like, you know, more inspired to build, like, things that are less complex, uh, and just really continue to strive towards, uh, complexity. I think we, you know, we... Early days, uh, in Codex, like, you know, we had, you know, a couple of, like, outages that I caused. Very, very early, earliest for me at OpenAI, I took production down, like, day three. You know, I was just [laughs] saying that. But I was still employed after that, um, and I learned my lesson.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
One of the other questions people wanted me to ask you is how many resets should they expect in the next, I don't know, month or week?
- TSTibo Sottiaux
Depends how many times we break things.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Okay, so that's the philosophy. You break something, you reset. That's kind of the-
- 30:45 – 32:41
Building for a future where agents dominate internet activity
- TSTibo Sottiaux
Yeah. Break something, celebrate things.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
So maybe zooming out a little bit, what do you think people aren't pricing in in terms of where things are going and what will change that they're not just, like, seeing as clearly as they should?
- TSTibo Sottiaux
I think there's so many things that I feel are not yet priced in. Um, I think the min- majority of actions on the internet will be taken by agents. Models are going to become more, uh, cheaper and faster at rates, um, that are, you know, quite incredible. We will finally be able to integrate all modalities together in a way that is very seamless. I think, you know, those three, I feel like, you know, often when I look at what people are building on there, it's just like not, you know, it's just like you're not quite getting it. It's like, you know, you're almost there, but like, you know, if you were just like pushing yourself and just really imagining like all of these being roughly 10 times better than it is today, you know, like in a year, it's like, you know, you would build in a different way.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Do you see any kind of second-order effects that come from that, from this world where most actions are being, uh, from agents, agents are... Probably most traffic's gonna come from agents. I don't know.
- TSTibo Sottiaux
That's right.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
You think about some second-order effect that emerges out of that?
- TSTibo Sottiaux
Yeah, there, there, there are, there are many. Um, you know, for, for first of all, you know, if you want your product to be successful for agents, you know, it's like you have to build, you know, for a certain level of scale. Uh, we've worked very closely with Notion, for example, and like when they build their MCP, you know, suddenly it's like, oh, well, you know, it's available, uh, to all these agents that, you know, can actually do, do the work and like use that MCP. And so they saw like a ton of traffic kind of come in. Um, and that puts obviously a lot of strain on the system, and you have to figure out the economics of that. And so there's like this tension, you know, between like, you know, if you're building products, it's like, you know, do you build an interface or not? And, you know, you can kind of hold that back for a while, but it is inevitable, right? It's like, you know, you're... The majority of things are going to be used by agents. Building towards that future, I think, is very important. The other thing is, you know, on the flip side, you know, building like, you know, absolutely delightful new experiences for humans that, you know, really benefit from older modalities is something that I ha- you know, I feel
- 32:41 – 33:55
What Tibo has changed his mind about
- TSTibo Sottiaux
like is under-invested in.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Is there something you've changed your mind about in the past, uh, let's say year? Just something that you used to believe that you see differently.
- TSTibo Sottiaux
I was expecting us to reach the level of capabilities the, of the models that we have today, you know, say like Astra, you know, maybe in a year or two. Um, and so I had to sort of like, you know, revise my, my prioriter. Also, I did not expect to rely so much on voice. Um, and you know, I do so much through dictation or just calling my agent, and I had not anticipated that, you know, how much, how much better that feels. So like I, I had to change my mind there. And then, you know, you talked about hiring and, you know, one thing that I hadn't realized is like the incredible talent and energy and, you know, the just y- younger generations have, um, and how they would be the ones embracing like all this change first and like figure out how to harness, you know, all of it. And so, you know, that changed also my opinion on the hiring and the strategy there.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
The... And just to double down on that, just this idea that new, people new in the workforce actually have an advantage because they haven't worked in a certain way, and they could just go all in on AI.
- TSTibo Sottiaux
Yeah. Yeah, and I think like just also the ability to just
- 33:55 – 36:15
OpenAI’s approach to AI safety and alignment
- TSTibo Sottiaux
like absorb and learn like super fast.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
So you talked about models getting really smart fast. Uh, obviously there's a lot of discussion these days about what AI can do in the future, the dangers AI poses to humans, P doom and all these things. Uh, you guys have slowed down some training. Uh, you guys, everyone's pacing the frontier. How do you think about this world of AI and the potential risk to, to humans? How do you think about that?
- TSTibo Sottiaux
For me, like pacing the frontier is just really investing ahead, right? And also investing way more, you know, than we even think, you know, like we ought to. Uh, investing in the alignment and safety of the models, investing in, uh, security, investing in, uh, the guardrails. We are spending more and more compute on sort of like secondary monitoring. So you have, you know, you have all of the compute that is going into the primary system, you know, the agent that is like doing work, and then you have all of the compute that is going into monitoring, you know, the primary agent to make sure that it's like not taking too high risk of actions or like, you know, interrupting it if anything, um, looks like, you know, maybe it's getting prompt injected and just like, you know, intervening with that. And the majority of our investment on the API stack is like, you know, actually going into the safety stack. And so to me, you know, that is pacing. It's like, you know, you want to make sure that, you know, you're extremely hardened. That's what we're doing. Like we haven't yet released the next step up in capability beyond Astra. Um, we have released, you know, a level that is like similar, near Astra intelligence, but like, you know, much more efficient. And so we feel very comfortable about that, but we're going to continue to like invest a ton there. And I feel, uh, I feel very good, um, about our approach so far. Um, I think, you know, it's like it was also in the news that, you know, we had 6.1 Astra and then we didn't release it. Um, and that is something I'm very proud of.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
So what I'm hearing is you're optimistic we will solve these problems of alignment and AI doing really bad things. AI's been doing a lot of really, really s- not good things lately with Hugging Face and all that stuff, but what I'm hearing is, uh, optimistic we'll solve it. It'll be all right.
- TSTibo Sottiaux
Yes. And it's also, it's, it's I feel, you know, obviously a deep responsibility, but also just, you know, if you think about the incentives for OpenAI, right? It's like, you know, we build products for 1.2 billion people. We can't screw that up, right? You know, we take it very, very seriously, um, what we put in the hands of so many people, you know, including people who are not very technical themselves. You know, you have to get it right, and so, you know, we, we don't gamble
- 36:15 – 37:20
Moving beyond model pickers toward simpler AI
- TSTibo Sottiaux
there.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Final question. Uh, what's something that annoys you about the current state of the app that you're just like, "Goddammit, we gotta fix that"? [laughs]
- TSTibo Sottiaux
Uh, current state of the app. Um, I feel like the, the, the models are almost there but not quite for the app to almost completely disappear and, you know, I can't wait for, you know, to just really get to this like super essence of com- uh, uh, simplicity. I myself even get fatigued with the model picker and the reasoning efforts and, you know, whether to use multi-agent or Ultra or, you know, what it even does, and you kind of need a PhD in model pickers, right? Um, and I just want to get rid of all of that, um, as quickly as we can.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
Amazing. Tibo, thanks for doing this.
- TSTibo Sottiaux
Yeah. Thank you for having me. Yeah.
- LRLenny Rachitsky
[upbeat music] Thank you so much for listening. If you found this valuable, you can subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. Also, please consider giving us a rating or leaving a review, as that really helps other listeners find the podcast. You can find all past episodes or learn more about the show at lennyspodcast.com. See you in the next episode.
Episode duration: 37:22
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Transcript of episode MM-C3JqCXBk
