Sam Altman Fact Check: AI Hype, Misunderstandings, and Personal Transformation

So, what version of you has died? Like who were you when you started and who have you become?

>> I was like much more carefree like when we started up when I was just like you know I was like I had a very easy life

at the time. I had a lot of hobbies and you know now I'm like incredibly precisely scheduled and I have not

gotten to do anything spontaneous in a long time. >> Was there any point ever in your life

where nobody else was convinced but just you? >> Launching ChatGPT was kind of an example

of that. Not that people didn't want to launch a chatbot but most people thought it was too early and not good enough.

>> When you talk to other people do they tell you that you're delusional sometime?

>> Yes, but I think I should probably get more of that. >> Why?

>> Well, one way that like a lot of people in roles like mine have had things go wrong is they get surrounded by too many

yes men. >> You've gone through like people suing you, people dropping out, there's

government like trying to find out so many things about you. Have you changed as a person with all of this now?

>> There's no way that anyone was going to like get to build superintelligence and not have a crazy life. But I think I'm

kind of like well wired for it. Like I can deal with a lot of insanity whipping around me.

>> When I talked to somebody in US they are slightly pessimistic about AI and when I talk to people in India they're very

optimistic about it. >> It's an incredible difference. India is like our biggest market in the world.

>> Why do you think it's the difference? >> One thing that countries that are developing faster and where the economy

is growing faster and there's like more of a need for products and services and are more welcoming of the AI than more

developed economies. So, I'm sure that's part of it. >> Do you think you're still being

misunderstood today? >> This technology is still not very well understood but I think people at least

understand AI is happening worldwide. This is like certainly the best time I've ever seen to make a new company.

>> Are you worried about it? >> About opening it? >> Yeah, of course.

>> What's your biggest worry? >> We have done something we have done something that is something that is

going to be an extraordinary force in society. I believe it can be a force for good but you know it's like very high

stakes and we have like a lot of responsibility. >> Do you feel that when you're gone,

you're not there to guide or protect your kids or family, will you be very comfortable your kids growing up in

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On figuring out, we try to study how the world's most extraordinary minds think.

And that's exactly what today's episode is about. Today's episode with Sam Altman is not about AI, is not about

technology. It's about a human being who's building that technology. What are his insecurities? What are his

fears? How does he think as a friend, as a father, as someone who's trying to build one of the most important things

which will shape humanity? How does he notice patterns and find the non-obvious things to work on to build something

incredible in the future? That's what we've tried to understand. I hope by the end of the podcast, you get

to extract some lessons from his mind and implement in your life to make your life better.

Watch this episode and let me know in the comments how did you find it. And the styling partner for this episode is

Levi's. Click on the link in the description to explore their latest collection. Enjoy the show.

>> Welcome on the show. >> Thanks for having me. >> Sam Altman, welcome on figuring out.

It's an honor. >> I really appreciate you doing this. >> You know,

if someone's watching you for the first time and they have no clue who you are, and

how would you explain them who you are in next 60 seconds? >> Um

I'm like a tech fan, like a curious person about the world and a believer that

AI is going to be this thing that touches all of our lives, hopefully in mostly super positive ways.

Um I'm a dad. I really love my kids. That's what I would say.

>> But do you ever think about certain things? Like this is how you're going to think or say or speak about?

Um I do just kind of try to naturally talk about what's on my mind uh or what

I'm interested in. >> Okay. And were you like this when you were a kid?

Always thinking about what interesting to say next. >> I think I was like that as a kid. I

think I would just try to like I I think I just always like followed what I was curious about.

>> And do you as a kid, did you ever feel inferior to someone? >> All the time.

I mean, I'm sure most kids do. Uh but I was like

you know, I was like a very nerdy kid. I like wasn't good at sports and I grew up at a time when like that was the

very much the cool thing. >> Same. >> Uh yeah.

>> I was not good at sports either. >> And it was like the cool thing. >> Yeah.

>> Yeah. Um so yeah, totally. I was like not a

I was not a I was I would say like a lot of friends and I connected well with

people, but I was never like a cool kid. >> Okay. Did that bother you? >> Sort of. Um

I mean, it did not like I don't think it bothered me like it bothers some people, but yeah, I think all kids like want to

be popular and cool and there's like

I think it's like very painful as a kid to not feel like in the inner circle or whatever.

>> You said it didn't bother you as it would to some people. What do you mean by that?

>> Well, I like >> What's the distinction? What did you think about?

>> I've talked to other people who are like, "Ah, you know, the defining characteristic of my childhood was that

I was like a nerd and not cool and I hated that." And I was like

a nerd and not cool and it like slightly bothered me. But I had my computer and I had like my little corset of friends and

I you know, like I had a wonderful childhood and I I think I was like very

happy. >> Okay, so here's what I want to do. I want to talk more about your brain, like

how you think, how you actually make decisions and what do you think about certain things because I think that's

really fascinating to me. >> Okay. >> And it's

>> Great. >> under-explored. >> I I think it's really hard to like

talk about yourself as well, but I'll try my best. >> Yeah, maybe just the kind of things you

because you've said couple of things in like a lot of your interviews here and there and I don't know why people didn't

just go like deep down on that that alley. It's something I want to do. So, you know, when I talk to somebody in the

US, a random person, they're slightly pessimistic about AI. And when I talk to people in India, they're very optimistic

about it. It's an incredible difference. Why do you think it's the difference? >> Um

well, first of all, India is like our biggest market in the world by ChatGPT users and growing very quickly

and you know, there's incredible builder energy of people

>> using it. It's bigger than the US. >> Yeah. More ChatGPT users in India than the US.

Um, and I mean, people are just using it in

incredible ways to build companies. Or, you know, I just heard about some Indian kid that needed to do some fundraising

for his school, and he'd never done fundraising before, and like, was able to get like

the full stack of it done with a set of our tools, and that's awesome. Um so, I think it's like a country that has

there's just a lot of adoption. It's growing very quickly. Um but

I I do think that the US, at least on expressed preference, is unusually negative on AI relative to the rest of

the world. And India's maybe unusually positive. >> But why? Like what do you make out of

it? Why is it Why there's difference? >> Um One thing that many people have observed

is that countries that are developing faster and where the economy is growing faster and there's like more of a need

for products and services and like, you know, there's just huge under supply are more welcoming of AI than more developed

economies. So, I'm sure that's part of it. >> Interesting. And the other thing when I

when I read about you, right? Like when I'm and about you in US and I read about you in India,

this sentiment of being pessimistic and optimist, it also reflects about you. And that's the most fascinating thing

that you're this person who started this most remarkable technological revolution here of our age. You were the first guy.

You don't even own equity in your own company. And yet, all of a sudden you became the

bad guy. Like how? Why? >> Um

Well, I think the US has great skepticism of people in power and in particular of

like the just enormous power that the tech industry holds.

Um but you know, I'd say like this is probably a good thing.

In some ways, it does feel to me like it's gone a little far. >> Interesting. What do you think is the

biggest misunderstanding about you in the world? >> Well, I I mean, you touched on one of

them, but like the I think not taking not having equity in OpenAI has been a mistake. I did it for what I thought

were good reasons. I think it's just been hugely confusing to people. Like it's it's it's kind of like

interesting, right? Cuz like if a if an artist works super hard on their art project or a sports star like

practices super hard and doesn't make a ton of money from it, no one has like a problem with that. That's kind of

understood. And this is like my equivalent of that. But yeah, like it's it's been

>> Why is it misunderstood? >> Um >> What do people not like what do they not

get about it? >> I think it's just very outside of the norm of why people assume that people

start companies or you know, work as business people. >> True.

>> It's just weird and like people don't like weird. People don't like weird. >> It's weird to me as well.

>> Yeah, and then you're like well what like why is he really doing it is it about you know, yeah.

>> And why are you doing it? >> I think this is the most interesting work and the kind of the most important

and useful thing I can imagine doing. It's incredibly interesting. It's

incredibly exciting to get to do like I mean what a quest. >> True, but it

it's a rabbit hole. We'll just keep going into because I don't understand this at all just like a lot of other

people. But I really respect what you do. So thank you.

>> Okay. >> One of the things you said um you know,

it takes like like I'll read it exactly as it is that you should trade being short-term low

status for being long-term high status. >> Yeah. >> Which most people seem unwilling to do.

Right? So as long as you're right, being misunderstood by most people is a strength not weakness.

I find it fascinating but the question is before the outcome is clear, how do you

know that this is being misunderstood and this not being wrong?

>> Well, I mean how about it is you don't really know. You can have like a high degree of

conviction. You can have an increasing degree of conviction as you get more evidence which I think is the right

thing to go for, but you don't know for sure. That's part of the excitement like you that you don't

know for sure, but when we started when we first started OpenAI, it was an extremely low-status thing to

do. Like we knew it'd be valuable if we could it to work, but it almost no one took us seriously. It

It was like a okay, AGI maybe 100 years from now, maybe never.

You're a bunch of like kids and you don't have the polished academics and whatever and

very very negative. Um we had like

a reason to make the bet and as we figured more things out, we had a reason to be more confident.

But it's still kind of amazing it all worked. Um so I think it was like a good

expected value bet to take. But it was far, far, far from certain. >> But what were the signals that

that was making you very certain that this might work, this something that I want to do?

>> Yeah. Um I kind of think all of us get like a few

of a small number of like great insights over our lives that we apply again and again

in new ways. And one of them for me was the sort of surprising properties of scale.

I noticed this in companies, countries, cities, individual people's careers,

uh, lots of pieces of technology that you know, networks like Y Combinator, which was the thing I was doing before

that when you really scale up something that's working at small scale, you often see big super linear returns

to doing it at bigger scale. Um and

because like anybody else, you know, I'm a pattern matcher whether I mean to do it or not,

uh once we saw that neural networks were working at all and they were getting better with

scale, I was like very interested. And I had a strong intuition

that we should try to scale them up a lot more. Now, this was before we knew how

precisely uh we could predict properties of scale. This was years before we had the scaling laws, but we had

we had this observation, approximately, that if you made a neural network bigger, it could do more impressive

things. And this had first led to the AlexNet result and then many more things after.

>> But then these were the signal probably a lot of people must be seeing, right? What was preventing them to

build on it? >> I find this one of the most confusing things I have ever observed in my

career. Why in 2015, 2016, and then even by 2018 to 2021,

um why other people were look looking at the same data and not saying, "This is

crazy. Like, we have to invest much more in this." I It seemed so obvious to me

and everybody else in the building. I mean, maybe like almost we felt delusional

because we're like, "How can How can anybody not How can people not see this?"

I I think there was something about It almost felt too easy. It almost felt too

unfathomable. You know, you'd look at the mistakes that these neural networks were making

and you would say, "There's no way that something so dumb can just fix all of its problems by scaling it up."

There's It just It seemed like all these smart people were saying you have to have

symbolic representations or you have to do this or I can give you this very good reason.

I remember someone articulating why our approach was never going to work, and it sounded so convincing.

>> What was it? >> Um it was like it went something like, "All right, what

these models are doing is they are learning to predict

from what's in their training set what's likely to come next. What that means they're never going to be able to

ex-make new knowledge because they can only model what's in their training set."

And like that sounds very, you know, reasonable. Maybe you can show a model a million math problems and it can learn

how to do those math problems, but you didn't show it a new thing that wasn't yet proven because it wasn't yet known,

and so it wasn't going to be able to do that. And obviously now we know that's

ridiculous, but at the time it sounded very compelling. And the thing that it was missing is

that what these models were are learning is not I mean, it also is, but the important

thing they're learning is not the these specific math problems, but the general purpose ability of reasoning.

And that that can expand into other things. >> So,

take me to a specific decision when you were doing all of this and other people were telling you that

hey, this might never work out, right? Tell me the one Take me to one consequential decision that you took

with 50%certainty and 50%delusion. >> After we finished training GPT-4.

This was about like um I think it's August of 2022. >> Okay.

>> And we finished it about 7 or 8 months before we released it to the world, something like that.

But we were, we were sitting on it and we were looking at it and

we knew it was extraordinary, but I don't it took us a little while to realize

just like the new avenues of research this was going to open up

and how quickly the models were likely to improve post GPT-4 and that we could do what became

the chain-of-thought work and the reasoning models. And

we then decided we were going to go make a very big bet on compute because we saw that we could continue to

scale models and that the value of these models would be really important, but it was new

and the rest of the world wasn't there yet. They hadn't even seen GPT-4. They had

not internalized what it what we thought it could do. And so, we decided we would bet the

company on buying up a lot of compute. And that felt very crazy to people, but we had enough conviction that we were

probably right because we were able to use this model and we had internalized the scaling properties.

>> And what was the other option you had? >> A much less ambitious bet on compute and a slower

rate of scaling. >> And do you think if any amount of other information you would have gotten at

that point, he would have changed the decision. >> I think if the model would even a little

bit less smart, you know, if if GPT-4 had come out at like the GPT-3.8 scale,

>> Yeah. >> we would not have had the conviction to do such a big bet.

>> When you talk to other people, do they tell you that you're delusional sometimes?

Even today? >> Um yes, but I think I should probably get

more of that. >> Why? >> Uh well, I think one of one way that

like a lot of people in roles like mine have had things go wrong is they get

surrounded by too many yes-men. >> Mhm. >> And you really you need the pushback.

>> But how do you make sure that today you are not surrounded with yes-men? >> Um

having your old friends around is very helpful. Having people that you've worked with for

you know, 10-plus years is very useful. Um and then really cultivating a culture

where you reward people for pushing back hard when you're wrong and making that easy to do. I think I think

it's also important. But it takes like active care. You know, the more times that you've been right and the more sort

of like power in the world you have, I think the harder this is to get. >> See,

here's a here's a confusion as a founder. So then you have like all

old friends, really smart people, the mentors that you think about. You have them around you and they're

telling you that, "Hey, this is wrong." and you're thinking in the wrong direction.

How do you then convince them or probably just go against them? And how do you know that going against them is

the right thing to do? Because I'm sure this happens. >> The number of times that I

do something against everyone else's advice is a very small. Like I It happens.

Uh but it's rare. And and I I like there are

I have met a lot of people, not a lot. I've met some people and founders, in particular,

who take the most pride in doing something when everyone else tells them it's wrong.

And my own belief is you should only do that very grudgingly. Like if you surround

yourself by smart people, you should mostly listen to them. And if you decide that even though none of them

think what you're doing is the right thing to do, and you're going to do it anyway, you should like view that as a

expensive, unlikely to be right, kind of high-stakes thing. And you really want to have conviction

on that. >> And talking about smart people and other founders,

what do you think? What stops them? They're intelligent, clearly intelligent. What stops them to build

such extraordinary things like you've done? >> Well, I think AI's happen only once, so

I think we got uh lucky or did a good job or whatever on

problem selection. Um but I think a lot of people build extraordinary things. The

the number the rate of great companies being created right now, I have never seen it be so high.

Um worldwide. Uh I think this is like certainly the best time I've ever seen.

I believe it is probably the best time in history to be able to to build something that to make a new company, um

to make a new technology, to make a new kind of creative project. Um we have just gotten this

unbelievable gift, and I think it's incredible what people are doing right now. So,

I think we're going to see a lot of very extraordinary things, companies and otherwise, get built.

>> So, now that everyone's building company and there's so many things happening, the action's happening, some founders

watching this right now, and is thinking that things that are obvious to me because of

AI and technology is not obvious to a lot of people. How can that person judge that it's the right thing to do and it's

not being misunderstood? >> Um I mean, this is kind of what you get

paid to do as a founder. Right? Like this is where if you are

starting the most ambitious company you could start. You will certainly be

misunderstood. >> Yeah. >> Now, there's many other companies that

are obviously good ideas, and you can still succeed big time at those.

But if the ideas are obvious, a lot of other ambitious people are going to start them, too.

So, in when we started OpenAI in 2015,

I think you could count on one hand the number of AGI labs that were being started that year.

I mean, maybe you could count it on much less than one hand. Maybe it was only OpenAI that year, I'm not sure. Um

and yet there were probably like 10,000 photo-sharing companies. Most people thought of starting a

photo-sharing company was a better idea. Um but the problem is there were 10,000 others, and also Instagram had a big

network effect and whatever else. So, so I think picking things that you have a reason to believe

are more valuable than they seem. Even if they're unlikely to work, so

valuable if they work that like the expected value is good. Um

you have a real advantage when you find something like that. When you understand a technology or a piece of science or

something about the world before other people do, um,

there's some instinct which I understand to say, "Ah, you know, there's all these smart people, and I

don't want them to call me dumb, so I, you know, they don't get it, and they're going to talk me out of it."

But I think there's another instinct which I encourage people to cultivate, which is

if you really understand something and it's not just like wishful thinking, um but you can

articulate why it's a good bet, you should cherish those moments. Like that's awesome. As a builder, that's

when you should be the most excited. >> How do you decide that? How do you find a non-contentious bet?

>> Uh good question. I I like My own experience of this was this was one thing that just no one ever

taught me. And you know, like very little of my

experience in school was figuring out what questions to ask. Um,

you figure out, like, answer other people's questions, and then at some point, I think, like, when you become a

PhD student or whatever, you got to start asking more questions and then eventually do more and more of that.

But, um I, I think we should focus much more on teaching people

teaching very young people to figure out what questions to ask and what things are interesting to explore

that we don't already know. And getting good at that skill

was the best way that I figured out the sort of non-consensus bets to take. >> Just figuring out how to ask good

questions. >> Figuring out how to ask good questions. >> Can you learn that?

>> I think so. Yeah. Uh I mean like all of these things, maybe not

everybody's going to have equal aptitude for everything, but I think this is one that a lot of people seem to be able to

learn. >> You know, there's I forget which which culture which country has this rule

where the kid when when he comes back from school, the mother asks the kid that

what's the question that you asked today. >> Really?

>> Yeah. >> Do you know what culture that's very interesting. Do you know what culture?

>> No, I think it's I think it's Israel or something. Someone in Israel. I I'm not sure, but

there is some culture where mothers just ask the kids. They don't ask about the highlight. They ask about

the what's one question did you ask today? >> That's cool.

>> Is that a good habit that we should >> I'm going to start that with my kids. I'll I'll I'll report back in 15 years

or something. >> But how do you know that it's not wishful thinking? Is there a sign? Is

there some something that you can pin down to and be like, okay, if these are the signals in the thinking that I'm the

way I'm thinking, probably this makes sense. >> Yeah.

Um I mean what one example one thing is can you explain it to a

optimistic enthusiastic, but kind of

mentally disciplined smart friend and can you update them about why it might be a good bet? So, I remember when we

were starting OpenAI, the the default was like strongly skeptical, but I would talk to people and I would

say, you know, here is the evidence. Here's what we've seen. Here's why this might work. Here's why it'd be huge if

it worked. Um and here's why this is an approach that we think has legs and and then, you know, if we

can make super intelligence, it was kind of obvious why that would be valuable to make.

Um and and you know, not every time, but enough

of the time when we talked to somebody who was like a smart person but a non-expert, they

would say, "Okay, that seems you can That updated me. That seems like it's worth

um doing." Now, if we had convinced everybody, it probably would have been too obvious.

But, if we had not been able to convince anyone at all, I would have been more skeptical.

>> Interesting. Now, >> as I'm saying that aloud, I'm thinking of there must be historical examples of

where someone was not able to convince anyone and they were still right. So, at some point, you got to just like trust

your own instincts here. >> Was there any point ever in your life where nobody else was convinced but just

you? >> I mean, there have been like small decisions where

I was like open I was going to do this thing and none of the rest of the leadership team wanted to.

>> Give me an example. >> Um launching ChatGPT was kind of an example

of that. Not that people didn't want to launch a chatbot, but most people thought it was

too early and not good enough. >> Interesting. And what made you go against all of them and be like, "Hey,

let's just launch it." The YC ground? >> I think it was the what Yeah, I think it

was the I think it was the YC experience. >> Really?

>> I think so. Like I I had really I had spent so long

drilling it into founders that if you're not a little embarrassed of your first version, you're waiting too long to

launch cuz what you need is feedback. The another thing that I had like cuz we had this like internal version. And this

is actually a good insight. Um the the retention was terrible of their

internal version. Um I think it was like, you know, 5%or something of the first version of

ChatGPT people would use and keep using. Now, there's a bunch of reasons why it was bad data in the first place. We had

better models, we had other interfaces. Um but many people would look at that and say you can't launch a product with

5%retention, that's terrible. And normally that's true, but then you would

talk to those 5%of users and some of them like really loved it. And

and there's this other YC learning which is the more important thing for initial

project is a small number of people that really love something, not a lot of people that like it a little bit.

And so although the retention numbers of the kind of internal ChatGPT prototype were very low,

the people who liked it really used it a lot and really liked it. And I thought that was a very good sign.

>> And the first thing you said do different things, right? The first was being

embarrassed like it's if you're not embarrassed about your first product then you're too late, right? Are you

okay with being embarrassed even today? >> Uh yes. >> You're okay with being misunderstood and

you're okay with being embarrassed. >> Yeah, I mean look, I want us to put out great products, but

I'm happy for us to put out some early sketches to get feedback and learn and some not all of them will

work. >> But nothing changes with the scale of your company now?

>> Oh no, not at >> enough users and then people trust you for so many

>> things that we put out to like all of the the entire ChatGPT user base have to have like a a high threshold. And also,

now that companies I mean this is like getting close to critical

infrastructure. Companies are really reliant on this uh and so for you know, for enterprise products we

ship there's like a a very very high bar. >> Okay, so now things have changed. Now

you now you're not >> But then we can still experiment with other, you know? I think hopefully

you'll see us experiment with many new products, some of which will really delight you and

make it into the core experience, and some of which people will look at and say, "You know, that seems like cool in

theory, but it it doesn't really fit for me. >> Interesting. And the other thing is we

were talking about being misunderstood. Do you think you're still being misunderstood today?

>> I think at this point most of the world looks at AI and says,"Okay, I believe this thing's going to happen."Now,

clearly it's not all popular. Um and I think our vision for the world and what we hope for or how people will

use this tool, this technology, um is still not very well understood.

Um but I think people at least understand AI's happening. >> Okay. Interesting. Let's come back to

you trying to do something extraordinary, right? And you taking bets on other people as well. And you're

talking about YC, right? There's another quote which is which you have only written is

I think you're some I'm paraphrasing and it's something like your

you have like your will to bend reality or your will to bend the world, the percentage of that particular thing is

really high. Most people don't even try. Something like that you said. Do you remember?

>> I saw I remember something like this, yeah. >> Like most people don't even try.

>> I think it's more like you you can like you can like you can do it much more than you think. Or like people

can do it much more than they think. And most people don't try enough. Something like that.

>> Yeah. And why do you think people don't take the moon shot? >> I have like a bunch of

theories on this, but many of them boil down to like people want to stay part of the herd and

it's like more comfortable to not do something unusual and maybe fail or maybe look wrong or maybe look dumb. And

and there's like a real It's easy to point to the evolutionary biology reasons of why this would be

true. Like you don't want to get kicked out of the tribe or whatever. Um but

I think people have like really strong pressures to not to not do that kind of stuff.

>> Just because of the way society is built. >> E-E-I mean even more than that, I think

society is built the way it is because of like evolutionary pressure.

And and I think that's probably in like very deep for most of us.

>> And what was in it you what was there in you which helped you bend this will or the

world according to your will? >> I I think like a lot of tech people I've always just had which would be a

negative in many other contexts. Like a little bit less of whatever that internal pressure to stay on the track

and do the same thing as other people. And I kind of think that's probably like

mostly a genetic thing. >> Just genetic? You don't think there's any other thing that you've built

>> No, I'm sure there's other things too. But like I, I um, You,know you can find like all these

studies about how people that are like slightly autistic are like tend to have, are more likely to

sort of invent new science, or like, you know, just get obsessed with one idea and work super hard in the lab against

all the odds for it. >> Yeah. And what was the will bending moment for you?

>> I mean probably starting OpenAI. Like it's hopefully it's too early to say, but

it's a I I I think that'll probably be the most important thing I've ever did. >> Do you do you worry about it?

>> About AI's? >> Yeah. About about OpenAI. >> Yeah, of course.

>> What's your biggest worry? >> Um I mean, we are going to do something

that or we have done something we're going to do something that is going to be an extraordinary force in society. I

I believe it can be a force for good, but and will be a force for good on net. Uh

great good. But you know, it's like very high stakes and we have like a lot of responsibility.

>> True. Do you know this takes me to the point where you you

wrote an essay um which was in the beginning about SMI? >> Yeah.

>> Right. And and after that essay during that May you

wrote an you wrote to Elon about it. And you said something that it would be good if someone else apart

from Google started it, yeah, right? This you said like the biggest threat for continued human existence the

biggest threat's going to be SMI. Right? Why do you think that if you started it

makes less of a threat? >> Well, I believe in pluralism. I don't think I

don't think like only us having it is good either. Um

the there are like I think there are two kind of cartoonish ways this goes

really wrong. >> Okay. >> Um one is that

there's like a loss of control to AI. And we intentionally or accidentally sort of cede control of the future to

systems that are unbelievably more capable than we are and we can't get it back.

Um and the other is like one person or company or country gets

way too powerful relative to everybody else. Um

and I think that's very unstable. I think it's actually bet much better for the

world for there to be multiple AI efforts with slightly different approaches that are competing with each

other and putting out in different ways. And you know, we talked earlier about like

the dislike of powerful people. I also have this like dislike of too intense power concentration.

Um I think that's like not I think that's not what works. So, um I

hope we don't do that. >> So, is that what you were thinking when you started it as that?

>> That someone with all the means in the world should not get this power today. >> Well, at least there shouldn't be one.

Like you want I think many efforts. >> Okay. And let's say now there are like too many,

right? There are four, five large companies. They have all the capital in the world. They have the

great talent. They have all sorts of technology research. They all are working at it. What's your unfair

advantage in this? >> Um I think we have, you know, the most

users and the best stack from

chips to data centers to models to other things that come around that. Um to to sort of put an abundant

put abundant intelligence into people's hands. Uh I think we have

the best brand and the sort of the values that people who are going to use this technology want. Like we want

everybody else to succeed and I think people can feel that from us. We don't want to be like the one company

to rule everybody. This goes back to our founding. >> No, I was talking about what makes you

the Sam Altman. >> Oh, me personally? >> What do you think is your super

advantage? >> Uh Well,

I've been doing it the longest. I mean, I guess that's not true. I guess Demis has been doing it longer than me. I but

I I think I have like a big advantage of just having had a lot of time to watch this development all the way through.

And not just for the intuitions about how to run the company, but connections throughout the whole

ecosystem. Uh they they really help there. >> Interesting. But you must be doing

something right. You said not sure about how to run the company, but you're doing something right about the company

because when you were fired, there were 700 people who threatened to resign.

What do you think you did right as a founder that 700 people, like almost the entire company, is ready to back you?

>> Um I don't think it's any like one thing, but

I don't think this is I don't think it's even mostly about me. I mean, maybe the thing that I I did is I got to, like,

you know, pick the leadership team and sort of set up how we what we run at and how we how we work.

But, uh, I think the thing that we have done most right

we just built an extraordinary collection of people, really motivated by the same mission,

um, with a very healthy culture for the right combination of being sure and high conviction where we

need to be that, and being open-minded and exploratory everywhere else and that, that that is a special

culture. I I I think like the someday when the history books get written on OpenAI the thing that I hope

they talk about the most is our rediscovery of the kind of culture that makes a great research lab and how

why that had gone missing for so long. >> And what can people learn from the culture that you've built here? If

someone is a young founder who's trying to build something like this. >> Um,

one thing is having very high convictions, extreme clarity on what

you're setting out to do. And even if what you set out to do maybe even more so if what you set out

to do sounds crazy to most people, the fact that you are willing to take that approach,

um, to talk and think that way, is very appealing to some set of people. And so, when we started, we said,"We're

going to try to build AGI, and this is the direction that we're going to push in to try to get there."

But the main thing is that, like, we have a bet on AGI, and if our initial direction turns out to be wrong, we'll

change. There were not many other efforts in the world that were still willing to say

they were trying to build AGI. I think even DeepMind at that point had stopped saying they were trying to do it. And so

although most people thought we were crazy and didn't want to be associated with us

we were effectively able to concentrate all of the really talented people that also believed in this.

And as I've looked at some of the other kind of great science and innovation projects in

recent history many of them have had that in common. >> Interesting. So you just pick up like

incredibly far-fetched big problem and be very clear about it that you're going at it. That's how you build a great

culture at a company. >> Maybe far-fetched is not what I would pick, but like, pick pick a problem that

is like point at something that some really talented people really want to work on.

Be very clear and focused that that's what you're trying to do. And don't hedge. Don't don't kind of

like give other people a reason to you know, don't don't let the fact that you're like some people are going to

call you crazy or stupid or worse try to convince you to not to mince your words.

Um and then and then you can get like a very high-conviction set of people together pointed at something really

important. But then >> you consolidated like you you attracted

all this talent in the world, right? And then they started leaving, few of them. And you call this like AI drama the

Shakespearean, right? Let's say Meena left, Ilya left, Dario started something else, Elon.

They all are also building something of their own. They also don't get along. Like everybody's building their own

thing. What is the disagreement about? You guys were the first ones to start it. Now everybody's building their own

thing. >> Um I

I think there is something that happens in many people's brains where they only trust themselves to build this because

it the stakes feel so high. >> Interesting. But it's and is that because of the approach or

is just like the or do you feel the concentration of

power in someone else's hand? They They worry about that or they worry about the way that someone's going.

>> I think they go together. Um I think it's somehow like his approach is bad and so I can't let

power get concentrated in his hands. Something like that. >> It's approach or trust.

>> Yeah. >> Rather than that. And you've gone through all of that. Have you changed as

a person with all of this now? Because you've you're young. You've >> I'm not that young anymore.

>> Yeah, but you've gone through like people suing you, you starting something crazy, people dropping out.

There's government like >> Look, they're trying to >> to find out so many things about you.

>> There's no way that anyone was going to like get to build super

intelligence and not have a crazy life. Um so

I'm kind of not that surprised. And I remember you know, early on I kind of didn't

think about it in any serious way when we started OpenAI. Um but then once it became more clear to

me it was really going to work, I remember like thinking very clearly like, man

my life is going to get very crazy. And that sucks.

But I think I'm kind of like well wired for it. Like I can deal with a lot of

insanity whipping around me. >> Why do you say so? >> I mean seem like

cuz I I like it seems like I can. >> And you were sure about it since you were since you started the company?

>> I that I was sure I'd be like, okay for dealing with it. >> Yeah.

>> No. Um No, again, when we first started I somehow like

even if I intellectually realized that this would happen if we were really successful, I didn't

like emotionally sit with it until later. >> Do you get nervous usually?

You don't get nervous, right? I I was reading somewhere. >> Um

I mean, I have gotten nervous before. >> Mhm. >> But now like stuff has just gotten so

crazy that like my activation energy is very high. >> But now do you get nervous at all or no?

>> Yes, it's just rare. Like it's that's a like a the threshold for it is high.

>> Nice. So, tell me it's tell me more. When do you get nervous and when do you not? It's a good thing.

>> The last time I remember it uh was when we were about to announce the Navier-Stokes result.

And I was like, this is like such a crazy I mean, this is like the real deal. This is like a

you know, one of the hardest things that are harder than something that people

have been able to do and May I is now doing and I was just like, this feels like a crazy moment and I was

I was definitely nervous about that one. That was probably the last like really kind of like heart-pounding thing.

>> And do you do anything to get back to normal? Is there some

>> I used to meditate a lot. >> Okay. >> Um

like a couple hours a day for a while. And now I don't, but if I if I do get nervous, I can like quickly drop back

into it. >> Quickly get back like just like this or do you have some ritual or some breath

work or something that you do? >> Um No, I can just like sit and close my

eyes and like get to a meditative state pretty fast though. >> In like minutes or seconds?

>> A lot of seconds, but not like that. Yeah. >> Nice.

>> Interesting. So, what version of you has died? With who like who were you when you

started and who have you become? >> was like much more carefree. Like when

we started up May I, I was just like, you know, I was like I had a very easy life at the time.

I had a lot of hobbies. You know, I was like free on a random Tuesday night for dinner on short notice

with my friends probably. Um and you know, now I'm like incredibly precisely scheduled and I

have not gotten to do anything spontaneous in a long time. That's very sad.

>> And what was that one moment where you were like, okay, now I can't be carefree anymore.

>> Uh >> But you got this realization. >> Peop-I got another version of this is

people like ask like, what do you really miss about like your old life? And

the last time someone asked me that, the thing that I realized I really miss is like going to sit in a coffee shop on a

Saturday afternoon with, like, a nice big cup of coffee and my laptop and

just, like, watching the world do its thing and, like, catching up slowly on email, but mostly just

scrolling the internet. And I have not gotten to do that in years. And

uh And I don't know why like that was the thing to like really jump out at me as

the thing I missed, but I do miss that. >> Interesting. And you can't do that anymore?

>> I mean I could do it, but there would be like, you know, two security guys sitting at

the table next to me and like it would not just be like an anonymous person in the world.

>> Okay. Okay. Coming back to the startup and the people that we were talking about and we missed that YC thread,

right? In YC, you wrote that you used to ask people how this could become monopoly one day.

Why you used to ask this question? to startups. >> Um

You I think we would usually say like what is what's the moat going to be or what's the competitive advantage

going to be. But these are all worries that mean the same thing, which is like how do you not have all profit margins

get competed to zero? >> But is that an important question to ask?

Do when you when you talk about building a moat in a way that it ends up becoming a monopoly?

>> I think it's somewhat >> when you start startup, you don't know. >> I don't think it's the most important

question. No, I I was going to say I I I think it's like I think it's not as important as other

questions that we ask. It's not the first like >> the only question.

>> Yeah, not even the first few questions. Like I don't I'd always start with just like what is the product? Why do users

need it? How are you going to get more users? So, it's like an element of strategy, but I don't think it's like

it's it's definitely not the most important one. >> Okay. But is it an important one after

like let's say company gets to a certain amount of scale then? >> Yeah, I mean I think it's

some version of the like what is your long-term competitive advantage going to be

is an important question. Um but not like a top it's not the most important question.

>> And so on. And then if say you used to meet like thousands of companies, right? And you have had an incredible investing

people on your as well. So, you chose these companies like Reddit, Stripe, bunch of them.

Can you tell after meeting a founder in like 30, 40 minutes that this person will be able to build a

company or not? >> Not perfectly, but yeah, I mean I think you can have like a pretty strong

intuition. >> What is that? Like tell me. What What do you see? What do you understand? What

pattern do you see? >> Uh One of There's like many obvious things

that I could say, so I'll try to say the ones that I think don't get talked about as much.

If they're like a clear communicator and they can really explain things well and it's easy to follow, this is a huge

thing that I look for. Um, if I leave the meeting like convinced that I want to work with them,

um, that's a huge thing I look for because, you know, a big part of the job of a of a early stage founder is to be

an evangelist in all these different ways with founder: with other founders, with

customers, uh, with people they're trying to hire, um, with investors. So,

that's something that I I look for. Um you know, if if they can like come up

with new ideas quickly and improve on ideas quickly, that's a thing that I look for.

Um you know, if they seem to have like interesting new well-reasoned talk

thoughts on the world I haven't heard before, that's a big one. Things like that.

>> Interesting. But even after all of this, there's one thing that a lot of entrepreneurs talk about is

pain and enduring capacity. Can you judge that? >> I think that's hard to judge directly in

a 30-minute meeting. You can ask people for and I used to do this sometimes, like

stuff in their life history that points that out. Um

but I think it's hard to tell that like internal play conversation. You have to rely on

stories they tell. It's just >> And can you judge someone's lying or

true or or is telling you truth? When they tell you some story about

they've endured certain amount of pain. >> This is what I mean. I think this is like hard to

yeah. >> And what's about you? What's What do you think is in you that

What amount of pain you can endure that 99%of the people will not? >> I don't think this is like my biggest

advantage um relative to some other founders I've seen, but I I am like I am really willing to stick with

something I believe in. And just keep going. >> And who's the other founder that came in

your head? >> I didn't have like a particular >> Okay, you just said it just like that.

But do you know anyone who has like really good pain enduring capacity and they're like they can just be at it?

>> Um I don't have like one specific name ready to go here, but like yeah, I was I

was definitely impressed by like many YC founders over the years who would just like grind it out

without much signal of success and you know, with very little in the way of resources.

>> And is there a pattern between all of them? Stripe, Reddit

apart from them being good communicator. >> Um I mean I think there are all of these

things that are you know, are

traits that many founders share, but there's very few that I would say are absolutes that exist across everybody.

Um one of the one of the great lessons of YC is how many different ways and how many

different kinds of founders can be very successful. >> But

But what pattern do you see in them? Like because this is just >> Well,

I I mean I I, I again, I think there are these things you can say, like that you

got to be driven and smart and a good communicator, and you have to like

have an idea you're really willing to commit yourself to to; and you have to Yeah, yeah, I think we could make this

like a long list of founders'traits, and I think we could make like a long list of good business traits.

But one of the interesting observations and I think why

sort of existence proof for how many different ways there are to succeed is if you took the top 10 YC companies

and said,"Okay, all 10 of these people are great founders." Clearly. All 10 of these are great

companies also clearly. I'm going to scramble which founder runs which or which CEO

runs which company. It would be a disaster. And

I think there's many things that one can take away from that observation. But one of them is that like

there's many different ways to be successful as a founder and there's not a single pattern that works in every

case for every company. >> Is there a way that or the single pattern that can be disaster which is

common? Let's say if there's no formula for great founder. >> Well, there's many things that are a

disaster. Um lack of drive lack of focus, lack of clarity, lack of vision um lack of ability to like solve hard

problems repeatedly with a smile on your face. All of these things are anti-patterns that yeah. So

uh there are many things that are almost certain to predict failure.

But there's also The opposite is easier. A lot of ways different ways to succeed. >> You said the first thing is lack of

drive. >> Yeah. >> And it's it's ambition. A lot of people

talk about Can you train somebody or can you teach somebody to be more ambitious? >> Yes, I think you can. This was one of my

most uh pleasant surprises of

YC. Um and I think part of like why YC adds much more value to the world than

people realize is is that there are some things that maybe you

can't train. But you can teach people to become more ambitious. Not everybody. It's hard to predict who you'll be able

to. But it can definitely happen. >> How? >> How do you teach it?

Um I found that the most successful thing was one

combination of a peer group going through the same thing. And two getting people to go through

successive challenges at increasing difficulty and realizing that they can do more than they think, do more than

they think, about our instincts, and keep going. >> And did you become ambitious like this

when you were in the same peer group in YC, or you were ambitious from before? >> No, I think I got much more ambitious.

>> And do you think that like the ambition comes from confidence that everyone else around me is ambitious, or does it come

from insecurity? >> Um Paul Graham used to say that there was

something about like the pressure of demo day coming up and people not wanting to fail, and I think that's kind

of that's a version of insecurity. But I think much more it comes from there's like excitement, and there's

like a positive force of being around these people doing these amazing things, and they're like,"Well, you know, we all

entered this together, and if they can do it, so can I." >> So for you, it's more confidence.

>> so. And I I really I really think that people

if you keep getting slightly bigger, slightly bigger, slightly bigger challenges and keep excelling at them,

you you really do build a lot of successive confidence and learning that way.

>> Interesting. And is it only the peer circle of the group

that makes you like this? >> What do you mean? >> Like is it only that other ambitious

people actually give you these things? >> No, I think you can get it lots of ways, but you know, I think we are as people

like hardwired to learn from the people around us. There was that There's that famous

quote, which is like,"You're going to become the average of your five best friends,

so you better pick those five people really well." >> You believe in it?

>> Not quite, but there's some truth to it, obviously. >> What's the worst advice you've gotten as

a founder? >> I mean, almost all the advice is terrible. I don't know how to pick the

worst thing, but I would say I would say that like uh my meta advice to founders is listen

to less advice. >> Listen to less advice. >> Listen to less advice.

>> Do you sometimes go home at some point and be like, "Hey, all this advice was maybe right,

and maybe I'm wrong." >> I think YC could probably distill the

five to 10 very important, highly confident pieces of general advice from all of the incredible wealth of

experience. Um and I think you should listen to those five or 10 things.

Uh, like, I think the slogan of YC, or the motto, whatever, like"Make something

people want,"is the, like, that is like the single commandment of startup advice to the degree there is

one thing for early-stage startups, and then there's, like, another list of things that are almost as important. But

you're not going to become a great founder by listening to like the 800th podcast of advice about how to start a

startup. You got to just like do it and figure it out on your own, and a lot of the advice

that you need is so specific to your case that beyond the like axiomatic truths, there's not that much more to

learn from like a one more podcast. >> Interesting. And but you wrote a you wrote an essay, 13 rules

to become successful. >> that I wrote that. I don't I don't remember what they were, and I

bet I could do a better version though. I bet I could do a shorter version though.

>> Okay. So, instead of 13, what would be? >> I think this point about compounding, the one I had first in there, I think

this is probably underestimated. Uh a lot of people I think don't drive themselves to

continued forward progress. The joke of this is like, you know, I'm sure you have 20 years of experience, but you

have 20 times the same one year of experience.

And you really, the thing that I think is so cool about a career is you can build on each successive phase.

But you have to continue to push yourself, and you have to like keep doing uncomfortable, non-obvious, new

things, and a lot of people fall off that very early in their careers. And so, staying on the compounding

exponential curve um is

empirically not what most people do. And I think that's a very good non-obvious piece of advice.

>> What's the most uncomfortable thing that you do these days. Uh

I mean, kind of like most of the stuff now feels new again. The the figuring out how we're going to

navigate this current debate about pacing progress feels like a very difficult thing to get

right. And pretty important and and just, you know, hard and new. >> And what do you do to make sure that you

you get it right? Is there something that >> A lot of time thinking and talking to

people and trying to get you know, more data and more new ideas into the mix.

>> Do you ever go home sometimes and be like maybe I'm wrong about this?

>> Yeah, of course. I think it'd be disastrous if I didn't. One one of the We talk about like conviction and

self-belief and all of that. I I think what some people take that to mean is

don't introspect. Just like be sure in what you're going to be sure in. Don't question it. I try to like question

everything all the time. Uh I still try to like act consistently and with conviction until

I find a reason to change my mind. Um but I think this is really important. >> Give me an example. How do you do it?

>> My process often is just to keep thinking about the same question from every different angle, throwing out a

bunch of bad ideas, trying to like break them apart or find problems with them in my own

head, then going to other people, um, taking more input, trying a different version of it out, adapting it

again. I think it's like an iterative process like that. >> Like give me an example of this. Like

what do you Let's say what's your current big problem and then you're just questioning from different angles and

>> Well, I think that one that I just gave, that the like this question of: How do we think about

the pace of progress as we enter this RSI era, and how do we avoid these two

ways that things could go wrong either way from a loss of control incident or a concentration of power incident? And

what is the right governance mechanism? How like think about how smart

an AI system should be allowed to be relative to a person, how quickly can that improve, how do we think about the

questions around security and monitoring and alignment? Um

and you know, where can we afford to take risks and not. >> And does that change when you're at

home? Because when you're at home >> Yeah.

>> And you see your kids and you see your family and you see like, okay, maybe I think from a different lens.

>> I am a big I mean I when I'm with my kids, I try to just hang with my kids and be the best dad I

can be and I try not to get myself distracted thinking about this other stuff. Um but

I have noticed a big difference like on the weekend mornings when I'm working at home

versus in the office. And I am I am a real believer for me at least that finding some sort

of rhythm where you can like intensely be with people and working very interactively and then

have real chunks of time where you can like shut out the world and just like think and work on your own. That back

and forth rhythm is super important to my particular style. >> You can do that easily or you have to

learn hard way? >> Yeah, that's just what works for me. That's very natural and easy. It's just

like >> down and shut like just being >> It's just shutting down. It's just like

a very different way of work. Like when I'm working in my office at home, it's like a very solo style of work.

And if I only did that, it would be a disaster. But if I didn't have that and only was like constantly in meetings at

the office, that also wouldn't work for me. So I need that back and forth. >> Interesting. And

when I asked you about the family, what I meant to is because you said this is the biggest

fear that you have that it could go either way. Do you feel that when you're gone and

you're not there to guide or protect your kids or family will you be very comfortable

your kids growing up in the world AI powered world which you're helping create today?

>> Yeah, I think it I mean as I said earlier, there's all these ways it could go wrong.

And uh, so, I don't know what the future's is going to be like look like but I am

comfortable that I have enormous trust in people to figure out how to adapt and thrive and

make society better for all of us and yeah I think the world will keep most likely keep getting much better.

>> Perfect. Well here are the here are the last two questions that I ask everybody. What's the most extraordinary thing you

want to build next? >> Oh man. Um The thing that immediately came to mind

is I am extremely excited to see how far we can push AI to discover new science. Um, math.

The math results were quite amazing to me, and it really made me think that we are closer to this milestone

than I expected us to be. But a machine that can help us understand the world better,

discover, you know, the deepest insights in physics, figure out

new medical treatments, new sources of energy things that I think we can't even

imagine but that better scientific understanding will enable. Um I am extremely excited for us to go build

that that machine. I I have always been struck by how much of the world getting better is better

scientific understanding and the fact that I think we can now really have AI accelerate that is going

to be transformative for for humanity. >> And that's something that you want to build?

>> Yeah. >> And what's the cost of becoming Sam Altman?

Becoming this person who's probably shaping the most important technology of mankind.

>> It's hard to answer that cuz like subjectively it's just like this is my life now.

You know I I I gave you like the trivial example earlier of

I can't go work in a coffee shop on the weekends. Um

but I feel like so incredibly lucky to get to do all this that although it's like

tiring and stressful and you know, a lot of people's anxiety gets projected onto me and there's like all

of these just sort of like life trade-offs. This is like all I know now.

Everything else is just like distant memory of this past thing. So I don't like

I don't have this like real like suffering, oh it's so horrible what's happened to me mindset about it.

Thank >> Thank you. Well, thank you so much. >> Thank you very much for having me on.

>> Thank you so much for having me. It was really good. I hope we get to do this many more times.

>> Me too. >> At some point we'll just deep dive and like do a much longer version of it. But

thank you so much for doing this. Thank you. Thank you. >> having me.

>> Thank you. >> I appreciate it. >> Hi. How's it going?

>> I'm doing good. >> Very good. Hi, I'm Raj. Nice to meet you.

>> Thank you so much for doing this. Nice to meet you, too. >> Thank you so much for doing this.

What do you think? How are you? >> This is cool. I'm good. >> You like the setup?

>> I've never seen a setup like this, but I do like the setup. No, I'm good. It's like it's uh

it's an extraordinary time in terms of just all of the model progress. >> Oh. How are you doing?

>> Good. I'm pretty pretty good at this point. Little nervous, but I think I'll get through.

I would love if you would try this. Yeah, of course. You try this. It's great.

>> Tastes good. >> Oh, perfect. >> What's What's the most important of the

mushrooms? >> What? >> Is it lion's mane and

>> Yeah. >> Yeah, I feel good. >> You feel good?

>> Yeah. >> Oh, amazing. That That's We send you a lot of stuff.

>> Thank you so much for watching this episode till the end. All I want you to do is three things now. Number one,

please subscribe. The more you subscribe, the better the guest we will be able to get for you and the more

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