Sam Altman on The Future of AI | Ep. 13

1. 0:00 – 0:48

   Intro

   1. JAJack Altman0:00

      So far, we've got a consumer business, a B2B business. There's this whole Joni Ive thing, which I'm sure you, you know, we can't really talk about.

   2. SASam Altman0:07

      Johnny.

   3. JAJack Altman0:08

      Johnny, I- ugh, we gotta start-- I gotta start over. I can't do that. So [chuckles]

   4. SASam Altman0:12

      Leave that in, please.

   5. JAJack Altman0:13

      No, no, no. We're gonna cut it. [upbeat music] All right. Today, I'm here with Sam. Sam, before we start, do you have anything you need to say?

   6. SASam Altman0:20

      You're my literal podcast bro now.

   7. JAJack Altman0:21

      Wow! This is great.

   8. SASam Altman0:23

      How did it come to this?

   9. JAJack Altman0:24

      It's so sad. You start a company, then you start being a VC, and now I'm here. Are you disappointed?

   10. SASam Altman0:29

       Well, I went the other way.

   11. JAJack Altman0:30

       What do you mean?

   12. SASam Altman0:31

       Well, I was, like, a VC, then I did a podcast, and now I'm here.

   13. JAJack Altman0:33

       No, you went the other way. Yeah, it's been good for you. It's great. I'm really proud of you. Okay, so-

   14. SASam Altman0:36

       But I think this is great for you.

   15. JAJack Altman0:37

       Thank you. Okay. I think you're an incredible podcaster.

   16. SASam Altman0:39

       It's a very nice sweater, too.

   17. JAJack Altman0:41

       Thank you. Thank you. Okay, so, uh, I want to start by talking about the... Stop! What were you gonna say? [chuckles]

   18. SASam Altman0:46

       Go ahead. I'll say it later, when

2. 0:48 – 5:40

   AI discovering new science

   1. SASam Altman0:48

      we're done recording.

   2. JAJack Altman0:48

      I wanted to start by talking about the future of AI, and, um, I want to talk about the medium term, 'cause the short term is not as interesting to me. The long term, who knows? But, like, five, ten years out is what I'm most interested in talking about, and I kinda want to try to pull out from you your best guess of a bunch of specific things. One of the places I wanted to start was in software. It seems like the most effective use cases so far, which I'm curious if you agree with, but seem to be, um, coding and then-

   3. SASam Altman1:16

      Chat and code.

   4. JAJack Altman1:17

      Yeah, chat and code. I'm curious, what's next? Like, on the next sort of-- what's the next set of things right after that, that will come?

   5. SASam Altman1:24

      Well, I think there will be incredible, like, other products. Like, there will be crazy new social experiences. There will be, like, Google Docs-style AI workflows that are just way more productive. You'll start to see, like, you'll have these, like, virtual employees. But the thing that I think will be the most impactful on that five to ten year timeframe is AI will actually discover new science. And this is a crazy claim to make, but I think it is true, and if it is correct, then over time, I think that will dwarf everything else.

   6. JAJack Altman1:55

      Why do you think it'll discover new science?

   7. SASam Altman1:57

      Well, I think we've cracked reasoning in the models. We have a long way to go, but I think we know what to do, and, you know, o3 is already, like, pretty smart. You hear people say, like, "Wow, this is like a good PhD."

   8. JAJack Altman2:07

      What does it mean to crack reasoning?

   9. SASam Altman2:09

      The models can now do the kind of reasoning in a particular domain you'd expect a PhD in that field to be able to do. In some sense, we're like, "Oh, okay, the A- AI's are like a top competitive programmer in the world now," or, "AI's can get, like, a top score on the world's hardest math competitions," or, "AI's can, like, you know, do problems that I'd expect an expert PhD on my-- PhD in my field to do." And we're, like, not that impressed.

   10. JAJack Altman2:31

       It's crazy.

   11. SASam Altman2:31

       But it is sort of a crazy thing.

   12. JAJack Altman2:33

       Yeah.

   13. SASam Altman2:33

       You know, this reasoning ability of the models over the last year.

   14. JAJack Altman2:36

       Are you surprised?

   15. SASam Altman2:37

       Yes.

   16. JAJack Altman2:38

       Yeah. You thought that it was just gonna be, like, the next token type of thing?

   17. SASam Altman2:41

       No, I thought it was gonna take a little bit longer to get where we are now. The last, the last year of progress has been faster than I thought.

   18. JAJack Altman2:46

       Did the way reasoning happen, happen the way you thought it would happen?

   19. SASam Altman2:49

       Like often has happened in the history of OpenAI, sometime, pretty often, the dumbest first approach turns out to work.

   20. JAJack Altman2:57

       Hmm.

   21. SASam Altman2:57

       So I don't think I should be surprised by that anymore.

   22. JAJack Altman2:59

       Interesting.

   23. SASam Altman2:59

       And yet, it's, like, a little surprising each time.

   24. JAJack Altman3:01

       So reasoning will lead to science going faster or just new stuff, or both?

   25. SASam Altman3:06

       Both. I, I mean, you already hear scientists who say they're faster with AI. Like, we don't have AI maybe autonomously doing science, but if a human scientist is three times as productive using o3, that's still a pretty big deal.

   26. JAJack Altman3:18

       Yeah.

   27. SASam Altman3:19

       And then, as that keeps going, and the AI can, like, autonomously do some science-

   28. JAJack Altman3:23

       Is-

   29. SASam Altman3:23

       -figure out novel physics.

   30. JAJack Altman3:24

       Is it all that happening as a copilot right now?
3. 5:40 – 8:27

   Humanoids are the future

   1. JAJack Altman5:40

      What about in the world of, like, physical stuff? 'Cause, like, I get that... I mean, it seems to me, you know, very clear that, like, software is just going this direction. Science, I no less take your word on it. What about, like, moving physical things around?

   2. SASam Altman5:53

      Behind, but I think we'll get there. Uh, for example, I think we have some new technology that could just do self-driving for standard cars way better than any current approach has worked.

   3. JAJack Altman6:05

      Hmm.

   4. SASam Altman6:05

      And that might not be quite what you meant by, like-

   5. JAJack Altman6:07

      No, it is

   6. SASam Altman6:07

      ... humanoid robots.

   7. JAJack Altman6:08

      Yeah.

   8. SASam Altman6:08

      But if our AI techniques can, like, really go drive a car, that's still pretty cool.

   9. JAJack Altman6:13

      Yeah. Um, humanoid robots are-

   10. SASam Altman6:16

       ... the dream, obviously. I really care about that. I think we will get there eventually. It's been, like, a hard mechanical engineering challenge.

   11. JAJack Altman6:23

       That's more the issue?

   12. SASam Altman6:24

       No, both things are hard, but, like, even if we had the perfect brain right now, I don't think we have the body yet. Um, we, we actually, very early on at OpenAI, we used to work on this robotic hand, and it was hard for all the wrong reasons. Like, the thing just broke all the time. The simulator was, like, a little bit off-

   13. JAJack Altman6:39

       Wow!

   14. SASam Altman6:40

       -but, yeah, we'll get there.

   15. JAJack Altman6:41

       Yeah.

   16. SASam Altman6:41

       I think five to ten years, we'll have great humanoid robots.

   17. JAJack Altman6:44

       Yeah.

   18. SASam Altman6:44

       Like, amazing, and they'll just, like, walk down the street and be doing stuff.

   19. JAJack Altman6:47

       Yeah, I mean, you would think that's where a huge amount of step change unlocks, right?

   20. SASam Altman6:51

       I think that will be one of the moments that not only is... unlocks a bunch of stuff in the world, I think that will feel the strangest.

   21. JAJack Altman7:00

       Yeah.

   22. SASam Altman7:00

       We get used to a lot of things. We get used to, like, ChatGPT doing these things that would have sounded like a miracle five years ago, but if you walk down the street and it's, like, half robots, are you getting used to that one right away? I don't know. Probably you do, but it feels like a big difference.

   23. JAJack Altman7:14

       That's the one that'll feel like there's, like, a new species taking over us.

   24. SASam Altman7:18

       Yeah, I think that'll feel... I don't think it'll feel like a new species or that it's taking over, but I think it will feel like the future in a way that ChatGPT still does not. I think also, if we could figure out great new computing devices to make, that will feel maybe like the future. But as amazing as ChatGPT is, or these new coding agents, and they are amazing, it's, like, still stuck in the p- form factor of the past.

   25. JAJack Altman7:42

       Yeah. It's also stuck in, it's stuck in the computer.

   26. SASam Altman7:46

       Yeah.

   27. JAJack Altman7:46

       Yeah.

   28. SASam Altman7:47

       There's definitely something about that it only can do stuff at the computer, but I don't know, like, how much of the economic value in all of the world do you think is, like, cognitive labor that can be done behind a computer? Like, half?

   29. JAJack Altman7:57

       I was gonna say a quarter, but maybe, maybe half.

   30. SASam Altman7:59

       I don't know, but some big number.
4. 8:27 – 11:20

   A world with superintelligence

   1. JAJack Altman8:27

      Yeah. What, what, like, um, if you're thinking about, you know, we're back here in ten years having another conversation, and we're like, "Did AI do what we thought it would do?" What metrics are you expecting? Like, is it that, like, the GDP growth curve has a kink in it? Is it that, like, life expectancy is up? Is it, like, there's less poverty? Is it something completely different?

   2. SASam Altman8:50

      So every year before the last, like, maybe up until last year, I would have said, like: "Hey, I think this is gonna go really far, but it still seems like there's a lot that we've got to figure out." I feel very confident at this point, the most confident I've ever felt, that we kind of, like, know what to do to get to incredible AI systems that are just super, super capable.

   3. JAJack Altman9:09

      Mm.

   4. SASam Altman9:10

      If something goes wrong, I would say, like, somehow it's that we build legitimate superintelligence, and it doesn't make the world much better.

   5. JAJack Altman9:17

      Sure.

   6. SASam Altman9:17

      It doesn't change things as much as it sounds like it should.

   7. JAJack Altman9:19

      How would that happen?

   8. SASam Altman9:20

      Which seems like a crazy thing to say.

   9. JAJack Altman9:21

      Yeah.

   10. SASam Altman9:22

       But, like, I don't know. If I told you in 2020, maybe I did tell you, like: "We're gonna make something like ChatGPT, and it's gonna be as smart as a PhD student in most areas, and we're gonna deploy it, and, you know, a significant fraction of the world is gonna use it and kind of use it a lot," maybe you would have believed that, maybe you wouldn't have, but conditioned on that, I bet you would say, "Okay, if that happens, the world looks more-- way more different than it does right now."

   11. JAJack Altman9:50

       Yeah.

   12. SASam Altman9:50

       So it's like we have this crazy thing.

   13. JAJack Altman9:52

       Yeah, I mean, there's this thing where it's like the Turing test, you know, everybody thought-

   14. SASam Altman9:56

       It just went by.

   15. JAJack Altman9:57

       Yeah, nobody really cared. And, yeah, I don't know what explains that.

   16. SASam Altman10:00

       Well, the fact that you can, like, have this thing do these, this amazing, amazing stuff for you, and you kind of live your life the same way you did two years ago-

   17. JAJack Altman10:07

       Yeah

   18. SASam Altman10:07

       ... kind of work the same way you did two years ago.

   19. JAJack Altman10:09

       Do you think that's possible, that we have, like, crazy superintelligence that's, like, four hundred IQ, and we're still-- that's still the case?

   20. SASam Altman10:15

       I totally think that's possible.

   21. JAJack Altman10:17

       Wow!

   22. SASam Altman10:17

       If it's off discovering new science for us, it- eventually, society will figure out how to deal with that, but it may be very slow.

   23. JAJack Altman10:25

       Well, what's funny is, if it looked like a copilot, you'd kind of still credit the PI at the lab who was using this, you know, four hundred IQ agent behind it. So-

   24. SASam Altman10:34

       I think you kind of will, no matter what. Humans are so wired to care about other humans. We need people in the story. You know, we need to talk about, like, that guy did that thing-

   25. JAJack Altman10:44

       Yeah

   26. SASam Altman10:44

       ... or, like, made this decision or made this mistake or had, you know, this whatever.

   27. JAJack Altman10:48

       That's why I was surprised that you don't think if we had, like, a super accurately embodied robot, that we wouldn't start to imprint some of that on that robot.

   28. SASam Altman10:56

       I think we are. We will find out. I may be wrong. I think we will have more of a relationship than we do now, as the thing is more embodied, but I think we are so deeply hardwired to care about other people, and that is gonna turn out to be pretty deep in biology. And if you know it's a robot, no matter how human-like it seems in other ways, you're not gonna care that much. That's,

5. 11:20 – 15:37

   Medium-term predictions

   1. SASam Altman11:20

      that's speculation.

   2. JAJack Altman11:20

      So reasoning was, like, one of the components of intelligence that, like, sort of got figured out. Is there, like, another thread going around, like, a topic of, like, agency or, like, some concept of, like, self-directedness? Like, is that a thing?

   3. SASam Altman11:34

      The ability to work on a goal over a very long time with a lot of complicated steps along the way, I think is maybe what you're going for.

   4. JAJack Altman11:43

      Yeah, same thing.

   5. SASam Altman11:44

      And that is definitely something we're working on.

   6. JAJack Altman11:46

      Yeah. What about the future sort of technical path would you say is now inevitable, and what parts would you say you're still not sure which way it'll break?

   7. SASam Altman11:56

      I think we will get to extremely smart and capable models, uh, capable of discovering important new ideas, capable of automating huge amounts of work, but then I feel totally confused about what society looks like if that happens. So I'm, like, most interested in the capabilities questions, but I feel like maybe at this point, more people should be talking about, like, how do we make sure society gets the value out of this? I think those questions have somehow become harder and less clear. This, I mean, this is-

   8. JAJack Altman12:27

      Yeah

   9. SASam Altman12:27

      ... a crazy statement-

   10. JAJack Altman12:28

       Yeah

   11. SASam Altman12:28

       ... that, like, we're gonna solve the superintelligence, but maybe society still sucks.

   12. JAJack Altman12:32

       Yeah.... Yeah, I can't tell-

   13. SASam Altman12:33

       It doesn't feel right to me, but like-

   14. JAJack Altman12:35

       I can't tell if sometimes with some of these statements that people don't react because they only kind of believe it, and maybe that's part of why, but I agree. I mean, that's what, you know, the history of a lot of this stuff has been. It, like, gets said, people don't quite believe it, and then it happens, and then people just kind of adjust. So I don't know what to make of all that either.

   15. SASam Altman12:51

       I feel like, I feel like we've been very right on the technical predictions, and then I somehow thought society would feel more different if we actually delivered on them than it does so far. But I don't even-- it's not even obvious that that's a bad thing.

   16. JAJack Altman13:03

       Well, one of the more obvious short-term impacts will be potentially, or you'd think would be, like, employment. That seems like something that, like, we don't need, like, you know, we don't need to believe crazy leaps to see that there ought to be some impact. Like, this is gonna happen in customer support very obviously right now, for example.

   17. SASam Altman13:20

       Yeah, I mean, my take on this is a lot of jobs will go away. A lot of jobs will just change dramatically, but we have always been really good at figuring out new things to do and ways to occupy ourselves and status games or ways to be useful to each other, and I'm, like, not a believer that that ever runs out.

   18. JAJack Altman13:38

       Yeah.

   19. SASam Altman13:38

       Uh, I think-- Now, I do think it gets maybe sillier and sillier looking from our current perspective.

   20. JAJack Altman13:44

       Yeah.

   21. SASam Altman13:44

       Like, podcast bro was not a real job not that long ago, and you figured out how to monetize it-

   22. JAJack Altman13:48

       Well, kind of was

   23. SASam Altman13:48

       ... and you're doing great, and we're all happy for you.

   24. JAJack Altman13:49

       We're so happy.

   25. SASam Altman13:50

       But would, would, like, the subsistence farmer look at this and say, "This was a job?" Or this is you, like, playing a game to entertain yourself?

   26. JAJack Altman13:55

       I think they would subscribe to this podcast.

   27. SASam Altman13:57

       I bet they would.

   28. JAJack Altman13:58

       They would like it. But I do think that there is, like, a big issue here in the short term. I think long term, who knows? I mean, one, one of the things that I'm curious about is, in general, so like, going from a time when, like, everybody was a farmer and, like, nothing that we're currently doing makes any sense, to, like, now you have all this stuff, is it different this time if there's enough resources to go around? Like, at some point, are there enough resources to go around and, like, that's what creates the difference, where now people just, like, don't make new jobs? And this-- so Vinod was on the podcast last week. He-- we're gonna release this one first, so this won't be out by the time that this is said, but his point was that people will just consume a lot more leisure. So he kind of took the view of, like, I think this time, like, there's just gonna be an abundance of resources. Everybody's gonna have the stuff that they need. We're gonna be able to build, you know, buildings, and people can now just, like, enjoy their lives.

   29. SASam Altman14:50

       Again, I think, like, the relativistic framing matters here. To us, I bet it will look like those people are just consuming crazy amounts of leisure.

   30. JAJack Altman14:58

       I guess this looks like a lot of leisure, probably.
6. 15:37 – 19:01

   Potential OpenAI apparatus

   1. JAJack Altman15:37

      you. So with OpenAI so far, we have, like, a consumer business, there's obviously a B2B business, there's something in hardware with Johnny Ive, there's a bunch of other potential stuff that looks like it's kind of hanging around. Um, can you talk about, like, what's the potential complete apparatus or what, what's the apparatus, at least in some period of time?

   2. SASam Altman15:55

      Yeah. I think what, what consumers want from us eventually is an AI companion, for lack of a better word, that lives in the ether and that is helping them in all these ways, through all these surfaces and all these products, and that gets to know you and your goals and what you want to accomplish and your information, and sometimes you'll, like, type in it with Cha- inside a ChatGPT, sometimes you'll be using a more, like, entertainment-focused version, sometimes you'll be using other services that we'll have, like, integrated with our platform, sometimes you'll be using our new device. And, but what you will have is this thing that will just be helping you get done whatever you want to get done. Like, sometimes it's pushing stuff to you, sometimes you're, like, asking questions, sometimes it's just there, like, observing and getting better for the future. But that is eventually what I think it'll feel like, is this is my... We don't quite have the right word for it, but my AI companion is the best I can do right now.

   3. JAJack Altman16:52

      Do you think we have, like, the wrong form factor with all of our stuff right now, like computing?

   4. SASam Altman16:58

      Yes. Uh, wrong is too strong of a word. I don't think we have, like, the optimal thing. We, we-- There have basically been two revolutions in computer form factors, interfaces, whatever you want to call it, that I think it really mattered. I mean, there was, like, stuff a long time ago, but neither you nor I were paying attention. But in our lifetime, there's been, uh, like, this kind of a computer, like a keyboard, a mouse, and a monitor, which is pretty awesome and pretty general purpose. Um, and then there's been, like, touch devices that you carry around, and honestly, those are the big ones. Both of those had the constraints of not having AI, and so there's, like, things that you had to build or that you could run or not. If you have this incredible new technology, you can maybe get mu- much closer to the kind of computer that exists, it, that exists in sci-fi.

   5. JAJack Altman17:51

      That'll be the same intelligence, just in a new form factor, which lets you use it differently.

   6. SASam Altman17:55

      Yeah, but the form factor really matters.

   7. JAJack Altman17:57

      Because it's with you all the time.

   8. SASam Altman17:58

      That could be one reason it really matters. If, if it's, like, with you all the time and full of sensors and kind of just understands what's happening and, you know, is keep track, keeping track of a lot of stuff, and also, if you trust that, like, with a very small command, you can get something complex to happen and happen correctly, like, y- you can just imagine very different kinds of devices.

   9. JAJack Altman18:14

      What are the other components that you're thinking about right now? Like, so there's like, you know, there, there's obviously the way that, like, chat is getting used by consumers. There's the API that, you know, startups are using all over the place. There's this, like, device thing. Like, what are the other, like, big legs of the stool?

   10. SASam Altman18:31

       I think the most important one that the world hasn't-... really thought about yet is what it means for this to be a platform that everything integrates into and that integrates everywhere, so that when you're using other- when you're in your car or when you're using some other website or whatever, it's just perfect continuity.

   11. JAJack Altman18:46

       Hmm.

   12. SASam Altman18:47

       I think that will matter a lot. There are new kinds of things to build. Like, there are totally new kinds of ways to think about productivity, new kinds of ways to think about social or entertainment, but I think the ubiquity will be one of the defining pieces.

   13. JAJack Altman19:00

       Hmm.

7. 19:01 – 21:51

   Supply chain implications

   1. JAJack Altman19:01

      Given that the intelligence has such strong implications through all of this, there's all these subcomponents to intelligence and, like, layers above the stack. You know, like, you've even talked about, like, energy. You're obviously super involved in energy. There's, like, a bunch of things even between there, and there's hardware and all this other stuff. Do you feel like it's, like, important either for, like, just OpenAI for the country? Like, how important is this whole stack, given all these implications?

   2. SASam Altman19:26

      Critical. I mean, I, I think the country needs to be thinking about- or, like, the world, the country, whatever I say, needs to be thinking about it from, like, the electron to the ChatGPT query.

   3. JAJack Altman19:36

      Yeah.

   4. SASam Altman19:36

      And there's a lot of stuff in between.

   5. JAJack Altman19:38

      Yeah.

   6. SASam Altman19:39

      And, uh, I've started calling that the, like, AI factory. I think we should call it the Meta factory because theoretically, this is a factory that can make more copies of itself, but whatever. We gotta do that whole supply chain. We, the world, have gotta do that whole supply chain to-

   7. JAJack Altman19:50

      Is it important for OpenAI to do a lot of it?

   8. SASam Altman19:52

      I mean, I think vertical integration can be good in some ways, but no, it is not important for us to do a lot of it if we could be certain that the whole thing would happen at enough scale. And so there's a lot of places where with partnerships, we can drive, like, huge-

   9. JAJack Altman20:05

      And then there was, like, no risk that we lost part of it.

   10. SASam Altman20:08

       Yeah. Yeah.

   11. JAJack Altman20:09

       On the energy side, are we gonna just consume humongous amounts of energy? Is that gonna be basically the only end state here?

   12. SASam Altman20:16

       I mean, I sure hope so. Like, I think that the thing that has most correlated with improvements in quality of life over history is increasing abundance of energy. I have no reason to believe that's gonna stop.

   13. JAJack Altman20:30

       Is there any, like, climate concern with that, or are you just like, "That's all gonna get figured out-

   14. SASam Altman20:35

       Well-

   15. JAJack Altman20:35

       ... and it's, like, the least of our worries?"

   16. SASam Altman20:36

       I think fusion will happen, and fission, new kinds of fission will happen, and-

   17. JAJack Altman20:40

       How confident are you on fusion? Are you totally confident on it?

   18. SASam Altman20:43

       I never say totally, but pretty confident. Like, quite confident.

   19. JAJack Altman20:45

       And that becomes, like, a w- a huge percentage of-

   20. SASam Altman20:48

       I think so. Um-

   21. JAJack Altman20:50

       Energy

   22. SASam Altman20:51

       ... But, like, n- next-gen fission stuff is awesome, too.

   23. JAJack Altman20:54

       Yeah.

   24. SASam Altman20:55

       Uh, like, I know most of this company called Oklo, but there's other companies, I think, doing great work, and, like, that's a huge win.

   25. JAJack Altman21:01

       Yeah.

   26. SASam Altman21:02

       Um, solar and storage seems pretty good, but, but I hope that eventually, humanity is consuming way more energy than we could ever be generating on Earth.

   27. JAJack Altman21:10

       Yeah.

   28. SASam Altman21:10

       Um, even if we switch entirely to fusion. Like, at some point, if you scaled up Earth's current energy use by a factor of ten or, you know, a hundred or whatever, you're just, like, heating up the Earth too much from the waste heat.

   29. JAJack Altman21:19

       Right. Yeah.

   30. SASam Altman21:20

       But we got a big solar system out there.
8. 21:51 – 29:04

   Meta / Scale AI news

   1. JAJack Altman21:51

      speaking of social actually, can we, can we, can I ask you about the whole, uh, Meta scale?

   2. SASam Altman21:55

      Of course.

   3. JAJack Altman21:56

      So, uh, what's the, what's the situation there?

   4. SASam Altman21:59

      Look, I've, I've heard that Meta thinks of us as their biggest competitor, and, you know, I think it is rational for them to keep trying. Their current AI efforts have not worked as well as they've hoped, and I respect, like, being aggressive and continuing to try new things. And, and I-- and again, given that I think this is, like, rational, I expect that if this one doesn't work out, they'll keep trying new ones after that. I remember once hearing Zuck talk about how, you know, Google in the early days of Facebook, it was rational for them to try social, even though it was, like, clear to people at, at Facebook that that was not gonna work, and I feel a little bit similar here. But they started making these, like, giant offers to, uh, you know, a lot of people on our team.

   5. JAJack Altman22:40

      Mm-hmm.

   6. SASam Altman22:40

      Um, you know, like, hundred million dollar signing bonuses, more than that comp per year.

   7. JAJack Altman22:44

      It's crazy.

   8. SASam Altman22:46

      And I'm-- actually, it is crazy. I'm really happy that at least so far, uh, none of our best people have decided to take them up on that. I think that people sort of look at the two paths and say: All right, OpenAI has got a really good shot, a much better shot at actually delivering on superintelligence, uh, and also may eventually be the more valuable company. But I think the strategy of a ton of upfront guaranteed comp, and that being the reason you tell someone to join, like, really the degree to which they're focusing on that, and not the work and not the mission, um, I don't think that's gonna set up a great culture. Uh, and, you know, I hope that we can be the best place in the world to do this kind of research. Uh, I think we built a really special culture for it, and I think that we're set up such that if we succeed at that, and a lot of people on our research team believe we will, or we're, we have a good chance at it, then everybody will do great financially. And it's- I think it's incentive aligned with, like, mission first and then economic awards and everything else flowing from that. So I think that's good. There's many things I respect about Meta as a company, um, but I don't think they're a company that's, like, great at innovation. And I think the special thing about OpenAI is we've managed to build a culture that is good at repeatable innovation, and I think we understand a lot of things that they don't about what it takes to succeed at that. But I don't know, it's been like... In some sense, I think it's been a clarifying thing for our team. Wish them luck.

   9. JAJack Altman24:14

      Yeah. I guess some of what it comes down to probably is, to what degree do you think AI work to date is co- that copying AI work to date is enough, versus how much of the innovation is in front?

   10. SASam Altman24:26

       I don't think it's enough. I think that there's a lot of people, and Meta will be a new one, that are saying: We're just gonna try to, like, copy OpenAI. We're gonna like... I mean, if you look at how much a lot of these other companies' chat apps look like ChatGPT-... even copying like the UI mistakes, it's crazy how much the research thing is just trying to get to where we are. And this was like a lesson that I learned- a lesson I learned at YC, that basically never works. You're always, like, going to where your competitor was-

   11. JAJack Altman24:53

       Yeah

   12. SASam Altman24:53

       -and you don't build up a culture of learning what it's like to innovate. And I think it's, like, much more deeply challenging than people realize once you're in that state.

   13. JAJack Altman25:04

       How do you do both? 'Cause, like, to have, like, an extremely commercial company and an extremely research-oriented company at the same time, there's just, like, not a lot of examples of it, and I get how you did it before. You were really, you know, commercialized, but now you're both, and it's still working.

   14. SASam Altman25:22

       We're newer at product. We're newer. Like, I don't-- We, we need to earn that that's working. We're doing okay. We're doing better and better, but we're-- Like, a lot of the history of tech companies is, you start a well-run tech company, a product company, and then you later bolt on a badly run research org. We're the opposite. We're the only case I know of that's the opposite. We started as a great research company-

   15. JAJack Altman25:42

       Yeah

   16. SASam Altman25:43

       -and bolted on this, was initially badly run, getting better and better product company. I think eventually we'll, we'll be a great product company, and I'm very proud of the work the team has put in there, but, like, two and a half years ago, we were only a research lab.

   17. JAJack Altman25:55

       That's crazy that it was that short ago.

   18. SASam Altman25:57

       Yeah, we had to build this whole big company, and it's, it's amazing, amazing what people have done there. But ChatGPT launched November thirtieth of twenty twenty-three.

   19. JAJack Altman26:04

       I mean, it's easier-

   20. SASam Altman26:05

       Twenty twenty two.

   21. JAJack Altman26:05

       -it's easier to get people together who know how to build a company than who know how to do that kind of research, obviously.

   22. SASam Altman26:10

       It's still hard. Like, most companies that have had to build out a product at this kind of scale got much more than two and a half years to do it.

   23. JAJack Altman26:18

       Yeah. Why would Meta think of you that competitively? Like, I obviously understand that, like, they probably just see that AI is the whole game, and, like, maybe that's enough of an explanation.

   24. SASam Altman26:27

       I assume it's just that-- Someone that used to work at Meta said to me that, like, you know, in the rest of the world, people think of ChatGPT as a Google replacement, but in Meta, people think of ChatGPT as a, like, a Facebook replacement.

   25. JAJack Altman26:40

       Because people are just spending all their time talking to-

   26. SASam Altman26:42

       'Cause they talk to it in a way that otherwise... And, and they like it more. Like, they have a better-

   27. JAJack Altman26:46

       Time is a scarce resource and attention.

   28. SASam Altman26:48

       It wasn't a question about time, it was that people, th- what this-- Well, may, of course, there is time competition, too, but that people, like, doomscrolling on the internet feels like it's making you worse. It may feel good in the moment, but it's making you feel worse, it's making you feel worse, a worse version of themselves. And a thing that we're very proud of is when people talk about ChatGPT, they're like, "I actually like myself better. It's, like, helping me. It's, like, helping me accomplish my goals." I feel like it's like... Uh, this was actually one of the best, nicest compliments I ever heard about OpenAI, just someone said: "It's the only tech company that has ever not felt somewhat adversarial to me."

   29. JAJack Altman27:20

       Hmm.

   30. SASam Altman27:21

       You know, you have, like, Google trying to, like, show me worse and worse search results and show me ads on... I love Google. I love all these companies. I don't think this is, like, totally fair. You have, like, Meta trying to, like, hack my brain and get me to keep scrolling. You have Apple that made this phone that I love, but it's like, you know, bombarding me with notifications and, like, distracting me from everything else, then I can't quit. And, and then you have, like, ChatGPT, and I feel like it's, like, kind of just trying to help me with whatever I ask, and that's kind of a nice thing.
9. 29:04 – 37:09

   Personal reflections

   1. JAJack Altman29:04

      Yeah. I lived with you, like, what? Ten years ago.

   2. SASam Altman29:09

      Yeah.

   3. JAJack Altman29:09

      And even then, I would say you were... And you were, like, running YC at the time, and at the time, you were, like, I would say, very high agency, and you just, like, did what you wanted, and there were no rules. But I think that since then, and especially recently, it's like there's really, like, seems like there's, like, no rules. Like, you know, the Stargate thing, there's, like, you know, bringing Fiji into the company, there's, like, the Johnny Ai. There's, like, a lot of things, honestly. And I'm curious if there's any mental update or sort of, uh, if there's anything that you're able to put your finger on or share that is, you know, making you function that way.

   4. SASam Altman29:48

      I think our grandma used to say-

   5. JAJack Altman29:49

      Oh, God.

   6. SASam Altman29:50

      No, it's, it's just like, "One of the great things about getting old is you stop caring what other people think," and I've felt that.

   7. JAJack Altman29:55

      Hmm.

   8. SASam Altman29:56

      I'm just like: "You know what?" And I've also just, like, you know, been in the f- fire line enough, but I do think there's something freeing about getting older and caring less about what people think.

   9. JAJack Altman30:08

      Do you still s- have a set of things that you're, like, hesitant of? Like, is there another level of agency that you could be acting with? Like, do you have ideas that you're like: "I would do that, but something's holding me back?"

   10. SASam Altman30:17

       There's a lot of, like, pract-- That, that, so that was the second thing I was gonna say is, like, as OpenAI gets into a place of, like, more resources and more potential, we can just do more things. So there's still, like, a lot of things. Like, I would love to go build a Dyson sphere around the solar system and, like, you know, make the world's gigantic data center with the entire energy output of the sun, but obviously, we can't do that right now, so I have to, like, wait.... a couple decades. Um, but I think we're able to do more. Like, we're credibly able to do more things now.

   11. JAJack Altman30:45

       How do you pick when you have- because that's the other problem, is like, you've got the like, the curse of choice, and so it's like, you could, you could start some rockets, you could do a social network, you could go nuts on whatever you wanted to. You could go crazy into robotics. How do you, like, pick when you've got over-choice like that?

   12. SASam Altman31:03

       The degree to which I have no extra bandwidth to do anything else right now is, like, hard to overstate. So like-- and also, I never wanted to run even one company, like, let alone a lot of them.

   13. JAJack Altman31:16

       Yeah.

   14. SASam Altman31:17

       I... I mean, I thought I was just going to be an investor.

   15. JAJack Altman31:19

       Yeah, I thought you were going to be an investor, too.

   16. SASam Altman31:20

       Uh, it's a nice life.

   17. JAJack Altman31:21

       It's a great life, yeah.

   18. SASam Altman31:22

       You seem like-

   19. JAJack Altman31:24

       Don't I seem happy?

   20. SASam Altman31:24

       I was gonna say, you just seem like you have a lot of time for hobbies.

   21. JAJack Altman31:27

       I'm glowing.

   22. SASam Altman31:27

       It's wonderful. You are glowing.

   23. JAJack Altman31:28

       Yeah, you know why? I got gua sha this, this morning.

   24. SASam Altman31:31

       What's gua sha?

   25. JAJack Altman31:31

       Gua sha is like when, um... You know, it's your lymphatic system. J- my wife did it. She-

   26. SASam Altman31:35

       She just, like, massaged your face for a minute?

   27. JAJack Altman31:36

       She's like: "You need-- This podcast, you know, might get a lot of views. I want your face to..." You know?

   28. SASam Altman31:41

       And she just sits there, like, rubbing stuff on your cheeks.

   29. JAJack Altman31:43

       For one minute, yeah.

   30. SASam Altman31:44

       Wow!

Episode duration: 37:09