Sam Altman on The Future of AI | Ep. 13

Jack Altman 0:00 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.

Sam Altman 0:07 Johnny.

Jack Altman 0:08 Johnny, I- ugh, we gotta start-- I gotta start over. I can't do that. So [chuckles]

Sam Altman 0:12 Leave that in, please.

Jack Altman 0:13 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?

Sam Altman 0:20 You're my literal podcast bro now.

Jack Altman 0:21 Wow! This is great.

Sam Altman 0:23 How did it come to this?

Jack Altman 0:24 It's so sad. You start a company, then you start being a VC, and now I'm here. Are you disappointed?

Sam Altman 0:29 Well, I went the other way.

Jack Altman 0:30 What do you mean?

Sam Altman 0:31 Well, I was, like, a VC, then I did a podcast, and now I'm here.

Jack Altman 0:33 No, you went the other way. Yeah, it's been good for you. It's great. I'm really proud of you. Okay, so-

Sam Altman 0:36 But I think this is great for you.

Jack Altman 0:37 Thank you. Okay. I think you're an incredible podcaster.

Sam Altman 0:39 It's a very nice sweater, too.

Jack Altman 0:41 Thank you. Thank you. Okay, so, uh, I want to start by talking about the... Stop! What were you gonna say? [chuckles]

Sam Altman 0:46 Go ahead. I'll say it later, when

Sam Altman 0:48 we're done recording.

Jack Altman 0:48 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-

Sam Altman 1:16 Chat and code.

Jack Altman 1:17 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?

Sam Altman 1:24 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.

Jack Altman 1:55 Why do you think it'll discover new science?

Sam Altman 1:57 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."

Jack Altman 2:07 What does it mean to crack reasoning?

Sam Altman 2:09 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.

Jack Altman 2:31 It's crazy.

Sam Altman 2:31 But it is sort of a crazy thing.

Jack Altman 2:33 Yeah.

Sam Altman 2:33 You know, this reasoning ability of the models over the last year.

Jack Altman 2:36 Are you surprised?

Sam Altman 2:37 Yes.

Jack Altman 2:38 Yeah. You thought that it was just gonna be, like, the next token type of thing?

Sam Altman 2:41 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.

Jack Altman 2:46 Did the way reasoning happen, happen the way you thought it would happen?

Sam Altman 2:49 Like often has happened in the history of OpenAI, sometime, pretty often, the dumbest first approach turns out to work.

Jack Altman 2:57 Hmm.

Sam Altman 2:57 So I don't think I should be surprised by that anymore.

Jack Altman 2:59 Interesting.

Sam Altman 2:59 And yet, it's, like, a little surprising each time.

Jack Altman 3:01 So reasoning will lead to science going faster or just new stuff, or both?

Sam Altman 3:06 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.

Jack Altman 3:18 Yeah.

Sam Altman 3:19 And then, as that keeps going, and the AI can, like, autonomously do some science-

Jack Altman 3:23 Is-

Sam Altman 3:23 -figure out novel physics.

Jack Altman 3:24 Is it all that happening as a copilot right now?

Sam Altman 3:26 Yeah, there's, there's definitely not. Like, you definitely can't go say, like, "Hey, ChatGPT, figure out new physics," and expect that to work. So it is-- I think it is currently copilot-like, but I've heard, like, anecdotal reports from biologists where it's like, "Wow, it really did figure out an idea. I had to develop it a little bit more, but it made, like, a fundamental leap."

Jack Altman 3:45 Yeah. Will it be easier to get AI to build you a whole business, like, build you a whole e-commerce business or, like, do, like, a hard piece of science or medium piece?

Sam Altman 3:56 I wonder about this: If you could, like, build AI, a hundred billion dollar particle accelerator-

Jack Altman 4:03 Yeah

Sam Altman 4:03 ... and say, "You'd make the decisions. You look at the data, you tell us, like, uh, you know, what experiments to run, and we'll go, like, find the stuff and do it." So you spend a hundred billion dollars doing that, or you spend a hundred billion dollars, like, building an infrastructure to, like, connect into the economy.

Jack Altman 4:21 Yeah.

Sam Altman 4:21 Which of those will it have an easier time doing something remarkable with?

Jack Altman 4:24 Yeah.

Sam Altman 4:25 And I think the physics is a cleaner problem.

Jack Altman 4:27 Hmm.

Sam Altman 4:28 You know, I think if you could get, like, new high energy physics data and, and AI, the ability to, like, run experiments, I think that's, like, a, a cleaner problem. Um, I've heard people say that they expect the first area of science-- Uh, this is, like, I don't know if this is accurate or not, but I've heard people say that they expect the first area of science where AI makes autonomous new discoveries to be astrophysics-

Jack Altman 4:47 Hmm

Sam Altman 4:47 ... 'cause there's just mountains of data, and we don't have enough PhDs to look at it.

Jack Altman 4:50 Hmm.

Sam Altman 4:50 And maybe it's not that hard to figure out new stuff, but I don't really know.

Jack Altman 4:53 Okay, so science gets better. The coding and chat will just keep getting better. Does that lead on the business side? Do you also then have the ability to just-- can you prompt a whole business? Like, could you just say, "Build me this type of business-

Sam Altman 5:05 Yeah

Jack Altman 5:05 -it looks like this," sort of?

Sam Altman 5:06 That will happen.

Jack Altman 5:07 Will that happen in, like-

Sam Altman 5:09 There's already people doing that for, like, small stuff. You know, you hear these stories of people who, like, use AI to do market research and, like, figure out new products and then, like, email some manufacturer and get some dumb thing made and sell it on Amazon and run ads. Like, there are people that have actually figured out, at small scale, in the most boring ways possible, how to, like, put a dollar into AI and get the AI to, like, run a-

Jack Altman 5:34 Mm-hmm

Sam Altman 5:34 ... toy business. But it's actually working.

Jack Altman 5:37 Yeah.

Sam Altman 5:37 So that'll climb the gradient.

Jack Altman 5:39 Yep.

Jack Altman 5:40 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?

Sam Altman 5:53 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.

Jack Altman 6:05 Hmm.

Sam Altman 6:05 And that might not be quite what you meant by, like-

Jack Altman 6:07 No, it is

Sam Altman 6:07 ... humanoid robots.

Jack Altman 6:08 Yeah.

Sam Altman 6:08 But if our AI techniques can, like, really go drive a car, that's still pretty cool.

Jack Altman 6:13 Yeah. Um, humanoid robots are-

Sam Altman 6:16 ... the dream, obviously. I really care about that. I think we will get there eventually. It's been, like, a hard mechanical engineering challenge.

Jack Altman 6:23 That's more the issue?

Sam Altman 6:24 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-

Jack Altman 6:39 Wow!

Sam Altman 6:40 -but, yeah, we'll get there.

Jack Altman 6:41 Yeah.

Sam Altman 6:41 I think five to ten years, we'll have great humanoid robots.

Jack Altman 6:44 Yeah.

Sam Altman 6:44 Like, amazing, and they'll just, like, walk down the street and be doing stuff.

Jack Altman 6:47 Yeah, I mean, you would think that's where a huge amount of step change unlocks, right?

Sam Altman 6:51 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.

Jack Altman 7:00 Yeah.

Sam Altman 7:00 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.

Jack Altman 7:14 That's the one that'll feel like there's, like, a new species taking over us.

Sam Altman 7:18 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.

Jack Altman 7:42 Yeah. It's also stuck in, it's stuck in the computer.

Sam Altman 7:46 Yeah.

Jack Altman 7:46 Yeah.

Sam Altman 7:47 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?

Jack Altman 7:57 I was gonna say a quarter, but maybe, maybe half.

Sam Altman 7:59 I don't know, but some big number.

Jack Altman 8:00 Yeah. Does stuff get much riskier once we have, like, super-embodied intelligence? 'Cause those things are gonna be way stronger than us, too.

Sam Altman 8:07 I don't know about way riskier. I think, like, the ability to make a bioweapon or, like, take down a country's whole grid, you can do, you can do quite damaging things without physical stuff. It gets riskier in, like, sillier ways. Like, I would be afraid to have a humanoid robot walking around my house that might fall on my baby unless I, like, really, really trusted it.

Jack Altman 8:27 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?

Sam Altman 8:50 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.

Jack Altman 9:09 Mm.

Sam Altman 9:10 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.

Jack Altman 9:17 Sure.

Sam Altman 9:17 It doesn't change things as much as it sounds like it should.

Jack Altman 9:19 How would that happen?

Sam Altman 9:20 Which seems like a crazy thing to say.

Jack Altman 9:21 Yeah.

Sam Altman 9:22 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."

Jack Altman 9:50 Yeah.

Sam Altman 9:50 So it's like we have this crazy thing.

Jack Altman 9:52 Yeah, I mean, there's this thing where it's like the Turing test, you know, everybody thought-

Sam Altman 9:56 It just went by.

Jack Altman 9:57 Yeah, nobody really cared. And, yeah, I don't know what explains that.

Sam Altman 10:00 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-

Jack Altman 10:07 Yeah

Sam Altman 10:07 ... kind of work the same way you did two years ago.

Jack Altman 10:09 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?

Sam Altman 10:15 I totally think that's possible.

Jack Altman 10:17 Wow!

Sam Altman 10:17 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.

Jack Altman 10:25 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-

Sam Altman 10:34 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-

Jack Altman 10:44 Yeah

Sam Altman 10:44 ... or, like, made this decision or made this mistake or had, you know, this whatever.

Jack Altman 10:48 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.

Sam Altman 10:56 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,

Sam Altman 11:20 that's speculation.

Jack Altman 11:20 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?

Sam Altman 11:34 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.

Jack Altman 11:43 Yeah, same thing.

Sam Altman 11:44 And that is definitely something we're working on.

Jack Altman 11:46 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?

Sam Altman 11:56 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-

Jack Altman 12:27 Yeah

Sam Altman 12:27 ... a crazy statement-

Jack Altman 12:28 Yeah

Sam Altman 12:28 ... that, like, we're gonna solve the superintelligence, but maybe society still sucks.

Jack Altman 12:32 Yeah.... Yeah, I can't tell-

Sam Altman 12:33 It doesn't feel right to me, but like-

Jack Altman 12:35 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.

Sam Altman 12:51 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.

Jack Altman 13:03 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.

Sam Altman 13:20 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.

Jack Altman 13:38 Yeah.

Sam Altman 13:38 Uh, I think-- Now, I do think it gets maybe sillier and sillier looking from our current perspective.

Jack Altman 13:44 Yeah.

Sam Altman 13:44 Like, podcast bro was not a real job not that long ago, and you figured out how to monetize it-

Jack Altman 13:48 Well, kind of was

Sam Altman 13:48 ... and you're doing great, and we're all happy for you.

Jack Altman 13:49 We're so happy.

Sam Altman 13:50 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?

Jack Altman 13:55 I think they would subscribe to this podcast.

Sam Altman 13:57 I bet they would.

Jack Altman 13:58 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.

Sam Altman 14:50 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.

Jack Altman 14:58 I guess this looks like a lot of leisure, probably.

Sam Altman 15:00 But look at you in that beautiful two thousand dollar Loro Piana sweater-

Jack Altman 15:02 Stop

Sam Altman 15:02 ... and doing, like, hosting this ridiculous podcast.

Jack Altman 15:03 This is a regular sweater. [chuckles]

Sam Altman 15:07 Um, so yeah, I, I think the relativistic point is really important, but like, you know, to us, our jobs feel incredibly important and stressful and satisfying, and if we're all just making better entertainment for each other in the future, maybe that's kind of what at least one of us is doing right now.

Jack Altman 15:23 That's right. That's exactly what I mean. [chuckles] Uh, all right, let's change gears. I don't like where this is going. Let's talk about OpenAI.

Sam Altman 15:30 It's a, a good thing about our brothers, they can really call you out on your bullshit.

Jack Altman 15:33 It's really helpful. I appreciate it. Let's go to... Can we talk about OpenAI?

Sam Altman 15:36 Yes.

Jack Altman 15:36 Thank

Jack Altman 15:37 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?

Sam Altman 15:55 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.

Jack Altman 16:52 Do you think we have, like, the wrong form factor with all of our stuff right now, like computing?

Sam Altman 16:58 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.

Jack Altman 17:51 That'll be the same intelligence, just in a new form factor, which lets you use it differently.

Sam Altman 17:55 Yeah, but the form factor really matters.

Jack Altman 17:57 Because it's with you all the time.

Sam Altman 17:58 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.

Jack Altman 18:14 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?

Sam Altman 18:31 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.

Jack Altman 18:46 Hmm.

Sam Altman 18:47 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.

Jack Altman 19:00 Hmm.

Jack Altman 19:01 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?

Sam Altman 19:26 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.

Jack Altman 19:36 Yeah.

Sam Altman 19:36 And there's a lot of stuff in between.

Jack Altman 19:38 Yeah.

Sam Altman 19:39 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-

Jack Altman 19:50 Is it important for OpenAI to do a lot of it?

Sam Altman 19:52 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-

Jack Altman 20:05 And then there was, like, no risk that we lost part of it.

Sam Altman 20:08 Yeah. Yeah.

Jack Altman 20:09 On the energy side, are we gonna just consume humongous amounts of energy? Is that gonna be basically the only end state here?

Sam Altman 20:16 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.

Jack Altman 20:30 Is there any, like, climate concern with that, or are you just like, "That's all gonna get figured out-

Sam Altman 20:35 Well-

Jack Altman 20:35 ... and it's, like, the least of our worries?"

Sam Altman 20:36 I think fusion will happen, and fission, new kinds of fission will happen, and-

Jack Altman 20:40 How confident are you on fusion? Are you totally confident on it?

Sam Altman 20:43 I never say totally, but pretty confident. Like, quite confident.

Jack Altman 20:45 And that becomes, like, a w- a huge percentage of-

Sam Altman 20:48 I think so. Um-

Jack Altman 20:50 Energy

Sam Altman 20:51 ... But, like, n- next-gen fission stuff is awesome, too.

Jack Altman 20:54 Yeah.

Sam Altman 20:55 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.

Jack Altman 21:01 Yeah.

Sam Altman 21:02 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.

Jack Altman 21:10 Yeah.

Sam Altman 21:10 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.

Jack Altman 21:19 Right. Yeah.

Sam Altman 21:20 But we got a big solar system out there.

Jack Altman 21:22 Doesn't all this stuff that we're talking about mean that, like, space is both, like, really important and becomes more likely in general?

Sam Altman 21:29 Yes.

Jack Altman 21:29 Like, we're going to space.

Sam Altman 21:30 I hope so.

Jack Altman 21:31 Yeah.

Sam Altman 21:32 Kind of sad if we don't.

Jack Altman 21:33 Yeah. It seems like the, it- it's funny-

Sam Altman 21:35 Should I make a rocket company?

Jack Altman 21:37 I told you that I thought you should make a rocket company.

Sam Altman 21:38 That's what I think.

Jack Altman 21:38 There's a bunch of things I think you should. I don't know why not.

Sam Altman 21:40 What else is on the list?

Jack Altman 21:41 I have a whole lot of things on the list for you. I would do rocket, I would do social. I would do as many as you could, basically. Why not?

Sam Altman 21:46 I kind of like doing one thing. I like my family. I'm pretty busy already.

Jack Altman 21:49 Yeah. Um,

Jack Altman 21:51 speaking of social actually, can we, can we, can I ask you about the whole, uh, Meta scale?

Sam Altman 21:55 Of course.

Jack Altman 21:56 So, uh, what's the, what's the situation there?

Sam Altman 21:59 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.

Jack Altman 22:40 Mm-hmm.

Sam Altman 22:40 Um, you know, like, hundred million dollar signing bonuses, more than that comp per year.

Jack Altman 22:44 It's crazy.

Sam Altman 22:46 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.

Jack Altman 24:14 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?

Sam Altman 24:26 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-

Jack Altman 24:53 Yeah

Sam Altman 24:53 -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.

Jack Altman 25:04 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.

Sam Altman 25:22 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-

Jack Altman 25:42 Yeah

Sam Altman 25:43 -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.

Jack Altman 25:55 That's crazy that it was that short ago.

Sam Altman 25:57 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.

Jack Altman 26:04 I mean, it's easier-

Sam Altman 26:05 Twenty twenty two.

Jack Altman 26:05 -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.

Sam Altman 26:10 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.

Jack Altman 26:18 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.

Sam Altman 26:27 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.

Jack Altman 26:40 Because people are just spending all their time talking to-

Sam Altman 26:42 'Cause they talk to it in a way that otherwise... And, and they like it more. Like, they have a better-

Jack Altman 26:46 Time is a scarce resource and attention.

Sam Altman 26:48 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."

Jack Altman 27:20 Hmm.

Sam Altman 27:21 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.

Jack Altman 27:48 Is there a way to do social that has, like, the interpersonal component and this energy?

Sam Altman 27:55 A version that I'm curious about, although this is-- I don't know what this would mean, uh, is like, could you have a feed that didn't have any default, but you could, like, kind of prompt it and say, like, "Hey, I'm trying to, like, get fit?"

Jack Altman 28:10 Mm-hmm.

Sam Altman 28:11 "Can you, like, show me stuff that is, like, helpful to that?" Or, "I'm trying to, like, learn more about current events. Can you, like, show me stuff from a neutral perspective that is not gonna make me angry, but it's just, like, actually gonna do it?" And that would clearly get less minutes spent than the algorithmic feed that's, like, outrage-baiting. But I think that'd be, like, a very cool version of an aligned AI helping you with the social experience that, that you actually want long term. I don't know. I feel like every morning, like, I wake up as this, like, recharged person that knows what I really want in life and that I have, like, such great intentions, and I can, like, commit to stuff for the day, and then, like, the day comes at me nonstop, and by, like, ten PM, I'm like: "Ugh, I wasn't gonna drink tonight, but I'm just gonna have one glass of whiskey, and I wasn't gonna look at, like, TikTok, but I'm just gonna scroll for two minutes."

Jack Altman 28:53 You shouldn't work so hard.

Sam Altman 28:55 I agree with that. But, like, if I could be my, like, first thing in the morning self all the time, and if I could get technology to, like, do the things I wanted, then I think that'd be great.

Jack Altman 29:04 Yeah. I lived with you, like, what? Ten years ago.

Sam Altman 29:09 Yeah.

Jack Altman 29:09 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.

Sam Altman 29:48 I think our grandma used to say-

Jack Altman 29:49 Oh, God.

Sam Altman 29:50 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.

Jack Altman 29:55 Hmm.

Sam Altman 29:56 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.

Jack Altman 30:08 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?"

Sam Altman 30:17 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.

Jack Altman 30:45 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?

Sam Altman 31:03 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.

Jack Altman 31:16 Yeah.

Sam Altman 31:17 I... I mean, I thought I was just going to be an investor.

Jack Altman 31:19 Yeah, I thought you were going to be an investor, too.

Sam Altman 31:20 Uh, it's a nice life.

Jack Altman 31:21 It's a great life, yeah.

Sam Altman 31:22 You seem like-

Jack Altman 31:24 Don't I seem happy?

Sam Altman 31:24 I was gonna say, you just seem like you have a lot of time for hobbies.

Jack Altman 31:27 I'm glowing.

Sam Altman 31:27 It's wonderful. You are glowing.

Jack Altman 31:28 Yeah, you know why? I got gua sha this, this morning.

Sam Altman 31:31 What's gua sha?

Jack Altman 31:31 Gua sha is like when, um... You know, it's your lymphatic system. J- my wife did it. She-

Sam Altman 31:35 She just, like, massaged your face for a minute?

Jack Altman 31:36 She's like: "You need-- This podcast, you know, might get a lot of views. I want your face to..." You know?

Sam Altman 31:41 And she just sits there, like, rubbing stuff on your cheeks.

Jack Altman 31:43 For one minute, yeah.

Sam Altman 31:44 Wow!

Jack Altman 31:44 Yeah, it was great.

Sam Altman 31:44 Well, you look great.

Jack Altman 31:45 Thanks.

Sam Altman 31:45 Tell her-

Jack Altman 31:46 Yeah

Sam Altman 31:46 ... good job.

Jack Altman 31:46 But I have time to do that.

Sam Altman 31:47 I'm gonna text her about my thoughts about that right after this. Um, I don't know. I would like to just do this one thing really well, and I sort of trust that other people will make great rocket companies.

Jack Altman 31:56 Would you say on Blend you're, um, do you overall really like it? 'Cause it's, like, more than you bargained for.

Sam Altman 32:02 I mean, I feel very grateful and very, like, lucky, for sure. And I have no doubt that, like, someday in the future, when I'm, like, retired, I will miss it, and, like, I'd be like: "Oh, man, I'm, you know, kind of bored now, and that was so cool."

Jack Altman 32:14 It's, like, very important.

Sam Altman 32:15 It feels very important. It feels very satisfying. Um, I feel, like, crazy grateful to get to do it, and I do like it almost most of the time, but man, has it been, like, all-out and overwhelming and, like-

Jack Altman 32:27 Yeah

Sam Altman 32:27 ... real. Like, I think I've been way more in the, in the kind of, like, line of fire than I ever imagined.

Jack Altman 32:34 Well, it's not really what you set out to do. I mean, like, you know, n- most of the time, somebody starts, like, a software company, they expect it to be a software company. I don't think you expected all of this.

Sam Altman 32:42 It's just-- It was supposed to be my retirement job. I was supposed to, like, run a little research lab.

Jack Altman 32:45 Yeah. And, I mean, there was a world where this didn't... I mean, there was obviously a lot of worlds where this didn't happen.

Sam Altman 32:50 Yeah.

Jack Altman 32:51 Aside from the liking it and aside from, you know, the number of hours, do you experience it as, like, heavy and important or like a playful, interesting puzzle?

Sam Altman 33:02 Uh, very much both of those at the same time. Like, I feel like it is clearly from, like, a societal impact perspective, or at least the potential, uh, it is the most important work, the most impactful work I'll ever touch. I don't know. I don't want to get, like, too much, like, drinking our own Kool-Aid, but like, you know, maybe this will be, like, somewhat historic work. Uh, and, and I feel that when I have time to, like, step back and think about it, but in the day-to-day, it's kind of like, you know, the smaller stuff, and I do find a lot of joy in the smaller stuff. Like, I love the people I work with. It's, like, very fun to get to, like, do a lot of the pieces. Some parts are, like, very stressful and painful, but it, it's the, like... It is more like a-- It feels more like an interesting puzzle than important work.

Jack Altman 33:49 You also get to, like, talk to whoever you want. That's cool. You get to, like, think about whatever you want.

Sam Altman 33:54 Oh, I don't get to think about whatever I want.

Jack Altman 33:55 You get, like, problems.

Sam Altman 33:56 I feel like I'm like a pre-trained model that just, like, wakes up in the morning.

Jack Altman 33:59 I have-

Sam Altman 33:59 Like, an hour to myself, and then I'm just, like-

Jack Altman 34:01 Right

Sam Altman 34:01 ... streamed stuff, and I have to react.

Jack Altman 34:02 Okay, fair enough.

Sam Altman 34:03 Yeah.

Jack Altman 34:03 I guess you could, um, you can put into the model... Everything's on the table, even if you can't control how much time you get to give to it, I guess.

Sam Altman 34:10 It doesn't feel that way.

Jack Altman 34:10 That's interesting.

Sam Altman 34:11 I mean, it feels like there's some small amount of time before the day really gets going, where I've got some agency and can decide some things.

Jack Altman 34:17 Hmm.

Sam Altman 34:17 And then I'm-- it feels, like, fairly reactive.

Jack Altman 34:19 Interesting. Yeah. I guess there's kind of no way around that, given the pace of scale.

Sam Altman 34:23 I'm trying to find it.

Jack Altman 34:24 That's tough.

Sam Altman 34:25 Yeah.

Jack Altman 34:25 I guess, you know, you'll get-- you, you hiring execs, it gets to a certain place at some point.

Sam Altman 34:29 Hopefully.

Jack Altman 34:30 What about for, like, your own experience? 'Cause, like, what's been interesting to me is, you know, obviously, I don't think any differently about, you know, you on some level other than I think this is very cool, but like, you've obviously gone from, like, tech echo chamber famous to just, like, regular New York Times famous. Is there any upside, or does it all just suck?

Sam Altman 34:47 I think there is a lot of upside to being tech famous. I think that's, like, the perfect level of it. Like, if you're, like, tech famous, you can sort of get a lot of interesting stuff done. You can meet kind of anyone you want. Like, it's, it's just, like, that felt... You can kind of, like, encourage people to do stuff. There's, like, a lot of good opportunities. That felt good. I mean, I think I'm not, like, celebrity famous. That would be really miserable, but I'm-- it's enough that I can't, like, quite have a normal life. Can't-

Jack Altman 35:12 Well, it has a different energy to it. Like, you're never gonna be as cool as Tom Cruise or something.

Sam Altman 35:15 For sure, for sure.

Jack Altman 35:15 It's just different.

Sam Altman 35:15 But I like-- you know, I can still, like, walk on the streets.

Jack Altman 35:18 Um, I didn't mention this to you, but when we were in the exploratorium last weekend, in the gift shop, somebody was like: "The CEO of ChatGPT is in the building." [chuckles] I said, "That's good." My son still calls ChatGPT Siri, which I think is very funny, and I-

Sam Altman 35:31 We're gonna talk about that.

Jack Altman 35:32 Yeah. That I talked to Siri this morning.

Sam Altman 35:34 It was very funny when you guys called this weekend, and he was like: "Are you really, are you really?"

Jack Altman 35:37 He didn't know that that was me.

Sam Altman 35:38 "Did you really make ChatGPT?"

Jack Altman 35:39 I just told him.

Sam Altman 35:39 Yeah.

Jack Altman 35:39 Yeah. The inventor of Siri right here. Speaking of kids, um, given the current trajectory you think things are on, does it m- make you change what you think kids should be learning or what you'll teach your own kids?

Sam Altman 35:51 My kid did learn to roll over yesterday.

Jack Altman 35:52 That's pretty good.

Sam Altman 35:53 Yeah.

Jack Altman 35:53 I was very impressed. The head strength.

Sam Altman 35:55 Incredible.

Jack Altman 35:56 Yeah.

Sam Altman 35:56 Top, top-tier baby.

Jack Altman 35:57 Is, um-

Sam Altman 35:57 Incredible.

Jack Altman 35:58 ... strong neck.

Sam Altman 35:58 Yeah. I don't think so. Like, I... I mean, this stuff's, it's not gonna s- ever seem weird to him.

Jack Altman 36:05 Right.

Sam Altman 36:05 Like, he's just gonna grow up in a world where, of course, computers are smarter than he is.

Jack Altman 36:08 Yep.

Sam Altman 36:09 And he'll figure out how to use them incredibly fluently and do amazing stuff, and that will just seem like-

Jack Altman 36:15 Yeah.

Sam Altman 36:15 Yeah.

Jack Altman 36:16 That's good. Hopefully, that's how it plays. When you go back to, like, YC after this experience, are you back, or are you like, "Oh, this is like..." You know, because obviously, you ran YC, and so you had that whole chapter of your life. When you go back now, are you like... How do you experience it? Is it like: "Oh, this is like a quaint thing," you know, all these-

Sam Altman 36:33 No, I love YC.

Jack Altman 36:34 Yeah.

Sam Altman 36:35 I, I, I think like a-

Jack Altman 36:35 I don't mean that in a negative way. I mean it in just sort of like a simple, simpler times kind of way.

Sam Altman 36:39 There's some nostalgia for that, yeah.

Jack Altman 36:40 Yeah.

Sam Altman 36:41 And it's really, like, fun to always, like, go back and talk to the batch, uh, but yeah, it hits the nostalgia hard.

Jack Altman 36:47 I just feel like it's, like, the most pure component of Silicon Valley is YC.

Sam Altman 36:51 I totally strongly agree.

Jack Altman 36:52 You know what I mean?

Sam Altman 36:52 A hundred percent.

Jack Altman 36:53 It's just so happy.

Sam Altman 36:55 It is earnest and positive and energetic and happy, and, like, clearly, it works super well.

Jack Altman 37:00 Yeah. All right, well, this was a blast. Mom, hope you are watching this. This was very fun. Thanks, Sam.

Sam Altman 37:05 Thank you, Jack. [upbeat music]