00:01[Music] Welcome to the entrepreneurial thought leader seminar at Stanford University
00:10This is the Stanford seminar for aspiring entrepreneurs
00:18ETL is brought to you by STVP, the Stanford Entrepreneurship Engineering Center, and BASIS, The Business Association of Stanford Entrepreneurial Students
00:27I'm Ravi Belani, a lecturer in the management science and engineering department and the director of Alchemist, an accelerator for Enterprise startups, and today I have the pleasure of welcoming Sam Altman to ETL
00:39Um, Sam is the co-founder and CEO of OpenAI
00:50Open is not a word I would use to describe the Seats in this class, and so I think by virtue of that, that everybody already knows OpenAI, but for those who don't, OpenAI is the research and deployment company behind ChatGPT, DALL-E, and Sora
01:02Um, Sam's life is a pattern of breaking boundaries and transcending what's possible, both for himself and for the world
01:08He grew up in the Midwest in St
01:13Louis, came to Stanford, took ETL as an undergrad
01:17Um, and we held on to Stanford, or Sam, for two years
01:22He studied computer science, and then after his sophomore year, he joined the inaugural class of Y Combinator with a Social Mobile app company called Looped
01:27That then went on to go raise money from Sequoia and others
01:33He then dropped out of Stanford, spent seven years on Looped, which got acquired, and then he rejoined Y Combinator in an operational role
01:40He became the president of Y Combinator from 2014 to 2019, and then in 2015, he co-founded OpenAI as a nonprofit research lab with the mission to build general-purpose artificial intelligence that benefits all humanity
01:54OpenAI has set the record for the fastest-growing app in history with the launch of ChatGBT, which grew to 100 million active users just two months after launch
02:01Sam was named one of Time's 100
02:08Most influential people in the world, he was also named Time's CEO of the Year in 2023, and he was also most recently added to Forbes list of the world's billionaires
02:15Um, Sam lives with his husband in San Francisco and splits his time between San Francisco and Napa, and he's also a vegetarian
02:20And so with that, please join me in welcoming Sam Altman to the stage, and in full disclosure, that was a longer introduction than Sam probably would have liked
02:35Um, brevity is the soul of wit, um, and so we'll try to make the questions more concise, but this is, this is, this is also Sam's birth week, it was his birthday on Monday
02:47And I mentioned that just because I think this is an auspicious moment, both in terms of time, you're 39 now, and also place, you're at Stanford in ETL, that I would be remiss if this wasn't sort of a moment of just some reflection
02:55And I'm curious if you reflect back on when you were half a life younger, when you were 19 in ETL, um, if there were three words to describe what your felt sense was like as a Stanford undergrad, what would those three words be? It's always hard questions
03:13Um, I was like, uh, you want three words only? Okay, uh, you can, you can go more
03:20Sam, you're, you're the king of brevity, uh, excited, optimistic, and Curious, okay, and what would be your three words now? I guess the same, which is terrific
03:30So there's been a constant thread, even though the world has changed, and you know, a lot has changed in the last 19 years, but that's going to pale in comparison to what's going to happen in the next 19
03:37Yeah, and so I need to ask you for your advice
03:44If you were a Stanford undergrad today, so if you had a Freaky Friday moment, tomorrow you wake up and suddenly you're 19 inside of Stanford undergrad, knowing everything you know, what would you do? Would you drop, be very happy? Um, I would feel like I was coming of age at the luckiest time
03:52Um, like in several centuries probably
04:01I think the degree to which the world is going to change and the opportunity to impact that, um, starting a company, doing AI research, any number of things, is, like, quite remarkable
04:10I think this is probably the best time to start
04:15Yeah, I think I would say this, I think this is probably the best time to start a company since, uh, the internet at least, and maybe kind of like in the history of technology
04:22I think with what you can do with AI is, like, going to just get more remarkable every year, and the greatest companies get created at times like this, the most impactful new
04:35Products get built at times like this, so, um, I would feel incredibly lucky, uh, and I would be determined to make the most of it, and I would go figure out, like, where I wanted to contribute and do it
04:50And do you have a bias on where would you contribute? Would you want to stay as a student? Um, would, and if so, would you major in a certain major giving the pace of change? Probably I would not stay as a student, but only 'cause, like, I didn't, and I think it's, like, reasonable to assume people kind of are going to make the same decisions they would make again
04:56Um, I think staying as a student is a perfectly good thing to do
05:02I just, I it would
05:09Probably not be what I would have picked
05:14No, this is you, this is you
05:20So you have the Freaky Friday moment, it's you, you're reborn and as a 19-year-old and would you? Yeah, what I think I would, again, like, I think this is not a surprise, because people kind of are going to do what they're going to do
05:25I think I would go work on research and, and, and where might you do that, Sam? I think, I mean, obviously I have a bias towards OpenAI, but I think anywhere I could, like, do meaningful AI research, I would be, like, very thrilled about
05:36But you'd be agnostic if that's academia or private industry? Um, I say this with sadness, I think I would pick
05:48Industry realistically, um, I think it's, I think you kind of need to be the place with so much compute
05:54Mmhmm, okay
06:00And, um, if you did join, um, on the research side, would you join? So we had Kazer here last week, who was a big advocate of not being a founder, but actually joining an existing company, sort of learn, learn the chops
06:06For the, for the students that are wrestling with, should I start a company now at 19 or 20, or should I go join another entrepreneurial, either research lab or venture, what advice would you give them? Well, since he gave the case to join a company, I'll give the other one, um, which is I think you learn a Lot, just starting a company, and if that's something you want to do at some point, there's this thing Paul Graham says, but I think it's like very deeply true, there's no pre-startup, like there is Premed
06:36You kind of just learn how to run a startup by running a startup, and if that's what you're pretty sure you want to do, you may as well jump in and do it
06:42And so let's say, so if somebody wants to start a company, they want to be in AI, um, what do you think are the biggest near-term challenges that you're seeing in AI that are the ripest for a startup? And just to scope that, what I mean by that are, what are the holes that you Think, what are the top priority needs for OpenAI that OpenAI will not solve in the next three years? Um, yeah, so I think this is like a very reasonable question to ask in some sense, but I think it's, I'm not going to answer it because I think you should never take this kind of advice about what startup to start, ever, from anyone
07:19Um, I think by the time there's something that is like the kind of thing that's obvious enough that me or somebody else will sit up here and say it, it's probably like not that great of a startup idea, and I totally understand the impulse, and I remember when I was just like asking people like what
07:38Startup should I start? Um, but I, I think like one of the most important things I believe about having an impactful career is you have to chart your own course
07:46If, if the thing that you're thinking about is something that someone else is going to do anyway, or more likely something that a lot of people are going to do anyway, um, you should be like somewhat skeptical of that
07:58And I think a really good muscle to build is coming up with the ideas that are not the obvious ones to say
08:04So I don't know what the really important idea is that I'm not thinking of right now, but I'm very sure someone in this room does, it knows what
08:15That answer is, um, and I think learning to trust yourself and come up with your own ideas and do the very, like, non-consensus things, like when we started OpenAI, that was an extremely non-consensus thing to do, and now it's, like, the very obvious thing to do
08:27Um, now I only have the obvious ideas, 'cause I'm just, like, stuck in this one frame, but I'm sure you all have the other ones
08:34But are there, so can I ask it another way, and I don't know if this is fair or not, but are what questions, then, are you wrestling with that no one else is talking about? How to build really big computers
08:47I mean, I think other people are talking about that
08:58But we're probably like looking at it through a lens that no one else is quite imagining yet
09:09Um, I mean, we're, we're definitely wrestling with how we, when we make not just like grade school or middle schooler level intelligence, but like PhD level intelligence and beyond, the best way to put that into a product, the best way to have a positive impact with that on society and people's lives, we don't know the answer to that yet
09:17So I think that's like a pretty important thing to figure out
09:25Okay, and can we continue on that thread then, of how to build really big computers, if that's really what's on your mind, can you? Share, I know there's been a lot of speculation, and probably a lot of hearsay too, about, um, the semiconductor foundry endeavor that you are reportedly embarking on
09:33Um, can you share what would make, what, what's the vision, what would make this different than, it's not just foundries, although that, that's part of it
09:47It's like, if, if you believe, which we increasingly do at this point, that AI infrastructure is going to be one of the most important inputs to the future, this commodity that everybody's going to want, and that is energy, data centers, chips, chip design, new kinds of networks, it's, it's how we look at that
10:01Entire ecosystem, um, and how we make a lot more of that, and I don't think it'll work to just look at one piece or another, but we, we got to do the whole thing
10:13Okay, so there's multiple big problems, yeah
10:24Um, I think like just this is the Arc of human technological history as we build bigger and more complex systems, and does it gross? So, you know, in terms of just like the compute cost, uh, correct me if I'm wrong, but ChatGBT 3 was, I've heard it was $100 million to do the model, um, and it was 100, 175 billion parameters
10:36GBT 4 cost $400 million with 10x the parameters
10:41It was almost 4X the cost but 10x the parameters, correct me
10:47Adjust me, you know it
10:51I, I do know it, but I won
10:55Oh, you can, you're invited to, this is Stanford
10:59Sam, okay
11:03Um, uh, but the, the even if you don't want to correct the actual numbers, if that's directionally correct, um, does the cost, do you think, keep growing with each subsequent? Yes, and does it keep growing multiplicatively? Uh, probably
11:07I mean, and so the question then becomes, how do we, how do you capitalize that? Well, look, I, I kind of think that giving people really capable tools and letting them figure out how they're going to use this to build the future is a super good thing to do and is super valuable, and I am super willing
11:32To bet on the ingenuity of you all and everybody else in the world to figure out what to do about this, so there is probably some more business-minded person than me at OpenAI somewhere that is worried about how much we're spending, um, but I kind of don't
11:41Okay, so that doesn't cross it
11:50So, you know, OpenAI is phenomenal, ChatGPT is phenomenal, um, everything else, all the other models are phenomenal
11:59It burned, you've earned $520 million of cash last year, that doesn't concern you in terms of thinking about the economic model of how do you actually, where's going to be the monetization source? Well, first of all, that's Nice of you to say, but ChatGPT is not phenomenal, like ChatGPT is, like, mildly embarrassing at best
12:16Um, GPT4 is the dumbest model any of you will ever, ever have to use again, by a lot
12:24Um, but, you know, it's like important to ship early and often, and we believe in iterative deployment, like if we go build AGI in a basement, and then, you know, the world is, like, kind of blissfully walking blindfolded along, um, I don't think that's, like, I don't think that makes us, like, very good neighbors
12:46Um, so I think it's important, given what we believe is going to happen, to express our view about what we believe is going to happen
12:51Um, but More than that, the way to do it is to put the product in people's hands, um, and let society co-evolve with the technology, let society tell us what it collectively, and people individually, want from the technology, how to productize this in a way that's going to be useful, um, where the model works really well, where it doesn't work really well, um, give our leaders and institutions time to react, um, give people time to figure out how to integrate this into their lives, to learn how to use the tool, um, sure some of you all like cheat on your homework with it, but some of you all probably do like very amazing, amazing
13:08Wonderful things with it too
13:26Um, and as each generation goes on, uh, I think that will expand, and that means that we ship imperfect products, um, but we, we have a very tight feedback loop, and we learn, and we get better
13:43Um, and it does kind of suck to ship a product that you're embarrassed about, but it's much better than the alternative
13:49Um, and in this case, in particular, where I think we really owe it to society to deploy iteratively, um, one thing we've learned is that AI and surprise don't go well together
14:00People don't want to be surprised, people want a gradual rollout and the ability to influence these systems
14:07That's how we're going to do it, and there may be, there could totally be things in the future that would change where we think iterative deployment isn't such a good strategy, um, but it does feel like the current best approach that we have, and I think we've gained a lot, um, from doing this, and you know, hopefully the larger world has gained something too
14:31Whether we burn 500 million a year, or 5 billion, or 50 billion a year, I don't care, I genuinely don't, as long as we can, I think, stay on a trajectory where eventually we create way more value for society than that, and as long as we can figure out a way to pay the
14:45bills, like we're making AGI, it's going to be expensive, it's totally worth it
14:51And so, and so do you have a, I hear you, do you have a vision in 2030 of what, if I say you crushed it Sam, it's 2030, you crushed it, what does the world look like to you? Um, you know, maybe in some very important ways not that different
15:03Uh, like we will be back here, there will be like a new set of students, we'll be talking about how startups are really important and technology is really cool, we'll have this new great tool in the world, it'll feel, it would feel amazing if we got to teleport forward six years today and have this thing that was like Smarter than humans in many subjects and could do these complicated tasks for us, and um, you know, like we could have these like complicated programs written, or this research done, or this business started, uh, and yet, like the sun keeps rising, the like people keep having their human dramas, life goes on, so sort of like super different in some sense that we now have like abundant intelligence at our fingertips, and then in some other sense, like not different at all
16:01Okay, and you mentioned artificial general intelligence, AGI, artificial general intelligence, and in a previous interview, you defined that as Software that could mimic the median competence of a, or the competence of a median human for tasks, yeah
16:12Um, can you give me, is there time, if you had to do a best guess of when you think, or arrange, you feel like that's going to happen? I think we need a more precise definition of AGI for the timing question, um, because at this point, even with like the definition you just gave, which is a reasonable one, there's, that's your, I'm, I'm, I'm paring back what you um said in an interview
16:24Well, that's good, because I'm going to criticize myself, okay
16:36Um, it's, it's, it's too loose of a definition, there's too much room for Misinterpretation in there, um, to I think be really useful or get at what people really want
16:47Like, I kind of think what people want to know when they say, like, what's the timeline to AGI, is like, when is the world going to be super different, when is the rate of change going to get super high, when is the way the economy works going to be really different, like, when does my life change? And that, for a bunch of reasons, may be very different than we think
17:05Like, I can totally imagine a world where we build PhD level intelligence in any area, and you know, we can make researchers way more productive, maybe we can even do some
17:18Autonomous research, and in some sense, like that sounds like it should change the world a lot, and I can imagine that we do that, and then we can detect no change in global GDP growth for like years afterwards, something like that, um, which is very strange to think about, and it was not my original intuition of how this was all going to go, so I don't know how to give a precise timeline of when we get to the milestone people care about, but when we get to systems that are way more capable than we have right now, one year and every year after, and that I think is the important point, so I've given up on trying to give the AGI
17:59Timeline, but I think every year for the next many, we have dramatically more capable systems every year
18:03Um, I want to ask about the dangers of AGI
18:07Um, and gang, I know there's tons of questions for Sam
18:16In a few moments, I'll be turning it up, so start, start thinking about your questions
18:25Um, a big focus on Stanford right now is ethics, and um, can we talk about, you know, how you perceive the dangers of AGI, and specifically, do you think the biggest danger from AGI is going to come from a cataclysmic event, which, you know, makes all the papers, or is it going to be more subtle and pernicious, sort of like, you know, like how? Everybody has ADD right now from, you know, using TikTok
18:35Um, is it, are you more concerned about the subtle dangers or the cataclysmic dangers? Um, or neither? I'm more concerned about the subtle dangers because I think we're more likely to overlook those
18:42The cataclysmic dangers, uh, a lot of people talk about and a lot of people think about, and I don't want to minimize those
18:47I think they're really serious and a real thing, um, but I think we at least know to look out for that and spend a lot of effort
19:01Um, the example you gave of everybody getting ADD from TikTok or whatever, I don't think we knew to look out for, and that
19:07That's a really hard, the, the unknown unknowns are really hard, and so I'd worry more about those, although I worry about both
19:13And are they unknown unknowns? Are there any that you can name that you're particularly worried about? Well, then I would kind of, they'd be unknown unknown
19:19Um, you can, I, I am, am worried just about, so, so even though I think in the short term things change less than we think, as with other major technologies, in the long term, I think they change more than we think, and I am worried about what rate society can adapt to something so new and how long it'll take us to figure out the new social contract
19:28Versus how long we get to do it
19:36Um, I'm worried about that
19:45Okay
19:50Um, I'm going to, I'm going to open up
19:54So I want to ask you a question about one of the key things that we're now trying to, into the curriculum, as things change so rapidly, is resilience
19:59That's really good, and, and you know, and the cornerstone of resilience, uh, is, is self-awareness
20:04And so, and I'm wondering, um, if you feel that you're pretty self-aware of your driving motivations as you are embarking on this journey
20:16So first of all, I think, um, I believe resilience can be taught
20:23Uh, I believe it has long been one of the most important life skills, um, and in the
20:29Future, I think in the over the next couple of decades, I think resilience and adaptability will be more important than they've been in a very long time
20:37So, uh, I think that's really great
20:45Um, on the self-awareness question, I think I'm self-aware, but I think like everybody thinks they're self-aware, and whether I am or not is sort of like hard to say from the inside
20:54And can I ask you sort of the questions that we ask in our intro classes on self-awareness? Sure, it's like the Peter Drucker framework
20:59So what do you think your greatest strengths are, Sam? Uh, I think I'm not great at many things, but I'm good at a lot of things, and I
21:06I think breadth has become an underrated thing in the world
21:12Everyone gets like hyper-specialized, so if you're good at a lot of things, you can seek connections across them
21:19Um, I think you can then kind of come up with the ideas that are different than everybody else has, or that sort of experts in one area have
21:25And what are your most dangerous weaknesses? Um, most dangerous, that's an interesting framework for it
21:39Uh, I think I have like a general bias to be too pro-technology, just 'cause I'm curious and I want to see where it goes, and I believe that technology is on the whole a net good thing, but I think that is a worldview
21:50That has overall served me and others well, and thus got, like, a lot of positive reinforcement, and is not always true, and when it's not been true, has been, like, pretty bad for a lot of people
22:03And then Harvard psychologist David McClelland has this framework that all leaders are driven by one of three primal needs: a need for affiliation, which is a need to be liked, a need for achievement, and a need for power
22:15If you had to rank list those, what would be yours? I think at various times in my career, all of those
22:22I think there's these, like, levels that people go through
22:35Um, at this point, I feel driven by, like, wanting to do something
22:48Useful and interesting, okay? And I definitely had like the money and the power and the status phases, okay? And then, where were you when you most last felt most like yourself? I, I always, and then one last question, and what are you most excited about with ChatGBT five that's coming out, that, uh, people don't, what are you, what are you most excited about with the of ChatGBT that we're all going to see? Uh, I don't know yet
23:01Um, I, I mean, this, this sounds like a cop out answer, but I think the most important thing about GP5, or whatever we call that, is just that it's going to be smarter, and this sounds like a dodge, but I think That's like among the most remarkable facts in human history, that we can just do something, and we can say right now with a high degree of scientific certainty, GPT-5 is going to be smarter than, a lot smarter than, GPT-4, GPT-6 going to be a lot smarter than GPT-5, and we are not near the top of this curve, and we kind of know what, know what to do
23:30And this is not like it's going to get better in one area, this is not like we're going to, you know, it's not that it's always going to get better at this eval or this subject or this modality, it's just going to be smarter in the general sense, and I think the gravity of that statement is
23:43Still like underrated, okay, that's great
23:48Sam, guys, Sam is really here for you, he wants to answer your question, so we're going to open it up
23:52Hello, um, thank you so much for joining, joining us
23:59Uh, I'm a junior here at Stanford
24:06I sort of wanted to talk to you about responsible deployment of AGI
24:12So, as you guys could continually inch closer to that, how do you plan to deploy that responsibly AI, uh, at Open AI, uh, you know, to prevent, uh, you know, stifling human innovation and continue to spur that? So I'm actually not worried at all about stifling of human innovation
24:19I, I really deeply believe that people will just surprise
24:24Us on the upside with better tools, I think all of history suggests that if you give people more leverage, they do more amazing things, and that's kind of like we all get to benefit from that, that's just kind of great
24:30I am, though, increasingly worried about how we're going to do this all responsibly
24:37I think as the models get more capable, we have a higher and higher bar
24:42We do a lot of things like, uh, red teaming and external audits, and I think those are all really good, but I think as the models get more capable, we'll have to deploy even more iteratively, have an even tighter feedback loop on looking at how they're used
24:53And where they work and where they don't work, and this, this world that we used to do, where we can release a major model update every couple of years, we probably have to find ways to, like, increase the granularity on that and deploy more iteratively than we have in the past, and it's not super obvious to us yet how to do that, but I think that'll be key to responsible deployment
25:17And also the way we kind of have all of the stakeholders negotiate what the rules of AI need to be, uh, that's going to get more complex over time, too
25:22Thank you
25:28Next question
25:33Where here? You mentioned before that there's a growing need for Larger and larger computers, and faster computers, however, many parts of the world don't have the infrastructure to build those data centers or those large computers
25:38How do you see, um, global innovation being impacted by that? So, two parts to that
25:49One, um, no matter where the computers are built, I think global and equitable access to use the computers for training as well as inference is super important
25:56Um, one of the things that's like very central to our mission is that we make ChatGPT available for free to as many people as want to use it, with the exception of certain countries where we either can't or don't for a
26:02Good reason, want to operate
26:08Um, how we think about making training compute more available to the world is, is, uh, going to become increasingly important
26:14I, I do think we get to a world where we sort of think about it as a human right to get access to a certain amount of compute, and we got to figure out how to, like, distribute that to people all around the world
26:26Um, there's a second thing, though, which is I think countries are going to increasingly realize the importance of having their own AI infrastructure, and we want to figure out a way, and we're now spending a lot of time traveling around the world to build them in
26:38Uh, the many countries that'll want to build these, and I hope we can play some small role there in helping that happen
26:44Terrific, thank you
26:50My question was, what role do you envision for AI in the future of, like, space exploration or, like, colonization? Um, I think space is, like, not that hospitable for biological life, obviously, and so if we can send the robots, that seems easier
27:16Hey, Sam, so my question is for a lot of the founders in the room, and I'm going to give you the question, and then I'm going to explain why I think it's complicated
27:21Um, so my question is about how you know an idea is non-consensus, and the reason I think It's complicated, it's easy to overthink
27:34Um, I think today, even yourself says AI is the place to start a company
27:40I think that's pretty consensus, maybe rightfully so, it's an inflection point
27:46I think it's hard to know if an idea is non-consensus, depending on the group that you're talking about
27:52The general public has a different view of tech from the Tech Community, and even Tech Elites have a different point of view from the tech community
27:58So I was wondering how you verify that your idea is non-consensus enough to pursue
28:03Um, I mean, first of all, what you really want is to be right, being contrarian and wrong
28:11Still is wrong, and if you predicted, like, 17 out of the last two recessions, you probably were contrarian for the two you got right, probably not even necessarily
28:17Um, but you were wrong 15 other times, and, and, and so I think it's easy to get too excited about being contrarian, and, and again, like the most important thing to be right, and the group is usually right, but where the most value is, um, is when you are contrarian and right, and, and that doesn't always happen in, like, sort of a zero one kind of way, like everybody in the room can agree that AI is the right place to start the company, and if one person in the room figures Out the right company to start and then successfully executes on that, and everybody else thinks, "Ah, that wasn't the best thing you could do," that's what matters
29:02So it's okay to kind of, like, go with conventional wisdom when it's right, and then find the area where you have some unique insight in terms of how to do that
29:17Um, I do think surrounding yourself with the right peer group is really important, and finding original thinkers, uh, is important, but there is part of this where you kind of have to do it solo, or at least part of it solo, or with a few other people who are, like, you know, going to be your co-founders or
29:33Whatever, um, and I think by the time you're too far in, like, how can I find the right peer group, you're somehow in the wrong framework already
29:45Um, so like learning to trust yourself and your own intuition, and your own thought process, which gets much easier over time, no one, no matter what they said, they say, I think, is like truly great at this, this when they're just starting out, because like you kind of just haven't built the muscle, and like all of your social pressure, and all of like the evolutionary pressure that produced you was against that, so it's something that like you get better at over time
30:09And, and, and don't hold yourself to too high of a standard too early on
30:15Hi Sam, um, I'm curious to know what your predictions are for how energy demand will change in the coming decades, and how we achieve a future where renewable energy sources are $0.01 per kilowatt hour
30:28Um, I mean, it will go up for sure, well, not for sure
30:36You can come up with all these weird ways in which, like, a depressing future is where it doesn't go up
30:40I would like it to go up a lot
30:43I hope that we hold ourselves to a high enough standard where it does go up
30:47I, I, I forget exactly what the kind of world's electrical generating capacity is
30:51Right now, but let's say it's like 3,000, 4,000 gigawatts, something like that
30:55Even if we add another 100 gigawatts for AI, it doesn't materially change it that much, but it changes it some
31:00And if we start at a terawatt for AI someday, it does, that's a material change
31:06But there are a lot of other things that we want to do, and energy does seem to correlate quite a lot with quality of life we can deliver for people
31:18Um, my guess is that fusion eventually dominates electrical generation on Earth
31:22Um, I think it should be the cheapest, most abundant, most reliable, densest source
31:26I could be wrong with that, and it could be solar
31:30Plus storage, um, and you know, my guess most likely is it's going to be 8 to 20 one way or the other, and there'll be some cases where one of those is better than the other, but, uh, those kind of seem like the the two bets for like really global scale one cent per kilowatt hour energy
31:43Hi Sam, I have a question
31:56It's about Op Guide Drop, what happened last year
32:09So what's the lesson you learn, because you talk about resilience, so what's the lesson you learn from left that company and now coming back and what what made you come back, because Microsoft also gave you offer, like can you share more? Um, I mean the best lesson I learned was that Uh, we had an incredible team that totally could have run the company without me, and did, did for a couple of days
32:22Um, and you never, and also that the team was super resilient, like we knew that some crazy things, and probably more crazy things, will happen to us between here and AGI, um, as different parts of the world have stronger and stronger emotional reactions, and the stakes keep ratcheting up
32:37And, you know, I thought that the team would do well under a lot of pressure, but you never really know until you get to run the experiment, and we got to run the experiment, and I learned that the team was super resilient
32:50And like, ready to kind of run the company
32:56Um, in terms of why I came back, you know, I originally, when, so it was like the next morning, the board called me and like, what do you think about coming back? And I was like, no, um, I'm mad
33:11Um, and then I thought about it, and I realized just like how much I loved Open AI, um, how much I loved the people, the C, the culture we had built, uh, the mission, and I kind of like wanted to finish it altogether
33:23You, you, you emotionally, I just want to, this is obviously a really sensitive and one of, one of, oh, it's, it's not, but was, I imagine that was, okay, well then, can we talk about the structure about it? Because this Russian doll structure of the OpenAI, where you have the nonprofit owning the for-profit, um, you know, when we're, we're trying to teach principal, ger, entrepreneur, we got here, we got to the structure gradually
33:32Um, it's not what I would go back and pick if we could do it all over again, but we didn't think we were going to have a product when we started
33:42We were just going to be like an AI research lab
33:46It wasn't even clear
33:51We had no idea about a language model or an API or ChatGPT
33:55So if, if you're going to start a company, you got to have like some theory that you're going to sell a product someday, and we didn't
33:59I think we were going to, we didn't realize we were going to need so much money for compute, we didn't realize we were going to, like, have this nice business
34:06Um, so what was your intention when you started it? We just wanted to, like, push AI research forward
34:11We thought that, and I know this gets back to motivations, but that's the pure motivation
34:20There's no motivation around making money or power
34:28I cannot overstate how foreign of a concept, like, I mean, for you personally, not for OpenAI, but you, you weren't starting, well, I had already made a lot of money, so it was not like a big, I mean, I, like, I don't want to, like, claim
34:35Some like moral purity here, it was just like that was the, of my life, a dver driver
34:42Okay, because there's this, so, and the reason why I'm asking is just, you know, when we're teaching about principle-driven entrepreneurship here, you can, you can understand principles inferred from organizational structures
34:49When the United States was set up, the architecture of governance is the Constitution, it's got three branches of government, all these checks and balances, and you can infer certain principles that, you know, there's a skepticism on centralizing power, that, you know, things will move slowly, it's hard to
35:02Get things to change, but it'll be very, very stable
35:08If you, you know, not to parrot Billy Eilish, but if you look at the OpenAI structure and you think, what was that made for? Um, it's a, you have a, like your near hundred billion dollar valuation, and you've got a very, very limited board
35:20That's a nonprofit board, which is supposed to look after its, its fiduciary duties to the, again, it's not what we would have done if we knew then what we know now, but you don't get to, like, play life in reverse, and you have to just, like, adapt
35:26There's a mission we really cared about
35:32We thought, we thought AI was going to be really important
35:38Thought we had an algorithm that learned, we knew it got better with scale, we didn't know how predictably it got better with scale, and we wanted to push on this
35:43We thought this was like going to be a very important thing in human history, and we didn't get everything right, but we were right on the big stuff, and our mission hasn't changed, and we've adapted the structure as we go, and will adapt it more in the future
35:56Um, but you know, like life is not a problem set
36:04Um, you don't get to like solve everything really nicely all at once, it doesn't work quite like it works in the classroom as you're doing it, and My advice is just like, trust yourself to adapt as you go
36:10It'll be a little bit messy, but you can do it
36:16And I just asked this because of the significance of OpenAI
36:21Um, you have a, you have a board, which is all supposed to be independent financially, so that they're making these decisions as a nonprofit, thinking about the stakeholder, their stakeholder that they are fiduciary of, isn't the shareholders, it's humanity
36:29Um, everybody's independent, there's no financial incentive that anybody has that's on the board, including yourself with OpenAI
36:40Um, well, Greg was, okay, first of all, I think making money is a Good thing, I think capitalism is a good thing
36:46Um, my co-founders on the board have had uh financial interest, and I've never once seen them not take the gravity of the mission seriously
36:52Um, but you know, we've put a structure in place that we think is a way to get um incentives aligned, and I do believe incentives are superpowers, but I'm sure we'll evolve it more over time, and I think that's good, not bad
37:03And with Open AI, the new fund, you're not, you don't get any carry in that, and you're not following on investments onto those
37:09Okay, okay, okay, thank you
37:13We can keep talking about this
37:16I, I, I know you want to go back to Students, I do too, so we'll go, we'll keep, we'll keep going to the students
37:20How do you expect that AGI will change geopolitics and the balance of power in the world? Um, like maybe more than any other technology
37:29Um, I don't, I, I think about that so much and I have such a hard time saying what it's actually going to do
37:34Um, I, or maybe more accurately, I have such a hard time saying what it won't do, and we were talking earlier about how it's like not going to, maybe it won't change day-to-day life that much, but the balance of power in the world, it feels like it does change a lot, but I don't have a deep answer of exactly how
37:59Thanks so much
38:23Um, I was wondering, sorry, I was wondering, in the deployment of like general intelligence and also responsible AI, how much do you think is it necessary that AI systems are somehow capable of recognizing their own insecurities or like uncertainties and actually communicating them to the outside world? I, I always get nervous anthropomorphizing AI too much because I think it like can lead to a bunch of weird oversights, but if we say like how much can AI recognize its own flaws, uh, I think that's very important to build and right now and the ability to like recognize an error in reasoning, um, and Have some sort of, like, introspection ability, like that, that seems to me like really important to pursue
38:47Hey, Sam, thank you for giving us some of your time today and coming to speak
38:54From the outside looking in, we all hear about the culture and togetherness of OpenAI, in addition to the intensity and speed of what you guys work out, clearly seen from ChatGPT and all your breakthroughs
39:00And also, when you were temporarily removed from the company by the board, and how all of your employees tweeted, "OpenAI is nothing without its people," what would you say is the reason behind this? Is it the binding mission to achieve AGI, or something even deeper, what is pushing the culture every day? I think it is the shared mission
39:19Um, I mean, I think people like, like each other, and we feel like we've, you know, we're in the trenches together doing this really hard thing
39:25Um, but I think it really is like deep sense of purpose and loyalty to the mission, and when you can create that, I think it is like the strongest force for success at any start, at least that I've seen among startups
39:42Um, and you know, we try to like select for that and people we hire, but even people who come in not really believing that AGI is going to be such a Big deal, and that getting it right is so important
39:54Tend to believe it after the first three months or whatever, and so that's like, that's a very powerful cultural force that we have
40:00Thanks
40:06Um, currently there are a lot of concerns about the misuse of AI in the immediate term, with issues like global conflicts and the election coming up
40:12What do you think can be done by the industry, governments, and honestly, people like us in the immediate term, especially with very strong open-source models? One thing that I think is important is not to pretend like this technology or any other technology is all good
40:25Um, I I believe that AI will be very net good, tremendously net good, um, but I think, like with any other tool, um, it'll be misused
40:40Like, you can do great things with a hammer, and you can, like, kill people with a hammer
40:45Um, I don't think that absolves us, or you all, or society from, um, trying to mitigate the bad as much as we can and maximize the good, but I do think it's important to realize that with any sufficiently powerful tool, uh, you do put power in the hands of tool users, or you make some decisions that constrain what people in society can do
40:57I think we have a voice in that
41:10I think you all have a voice on that
41:22I think the Governments and our elected representatives in democratic processes have the loudest voice in that, but we're not going to get this perfectly right, like we, society, are not going to get this perfectly right, and a tight feedback loop, I think, is the best way to get it closest to right
41:34Um, and the way that that balance gets negotiated of safety versus freedom and autonomy, um, I think it's like worth studying that with previous technologies, and we'll do the best we can here
41:42We, society, will do the best we can here
41:49Um, gang, actually, I've got to cut it, sorry, I know
41:53Um, I'm wanting to be very sensitive to time, I know
41:56The interest far exceeds the time and the love for Sam
41:59Um, Sam, I know it is your birthday
42:02I don't know if you can indulge us because I know there's a lot of love for you, so I wonder if we can all just sing Happy Birthday
42:05No, no, no, please no, we want to make you very uncomfortable
42:11One more question, I'd much rather do one more question, this is less interesting to you, thank you
42:15We can, you can do one more question quickly
42:19Dear Sam, happy birthday to you, 20 seconds of awkwardness
42:23Is there a burner question, somebody who's got a real burner and we only have 30 seconds, so make it short
42:29Um, hi, I wanted to ask if the prospect of Making something smarter than any human could possibly be scares you, it of course does, and I think it would be like really weird and, uh, a bad sign if it didn't scare me
42:50Um, humans have gotten dramatically smarter and more capable over time
42:56You are dramatically more capable than your great, great grandparents, and there's almost no biological drift over that period, like, sure, you eat a little bit better and you got better healthcare, um, maybe you eat worse, I don't know, um, but that's not the main reason you're more capable
43:14Um, you are more capable because the infrastructure of society is way smarter and way more
43:25Capable than any human, and through that, it made you, society, people that came before you, um, made you, uh, the internet, the iPhone, a huge amount of knowledge available at your fingertips, and you can do things that your predecessors would find absolutely breathtaking
43:44Um, society is far smarter than you now
43:50Um, society is an AGI, as far as you can tell, and the way that that happened was not any individual's brain, but the space between all of us, that scaffolding that we build up, um, and contribute to brick by brick, step by step, uh, and then we use to go to far greater heights for the people that come after us
44:11Things that are smarter than us will contribute to that same scaffolding
44:18Um, you will have, your children will have tools available that you didn't, um, and that scaffolding will have gotten built up to greater heights, and that's always a little bit scary, um, but I think it's like, more way more good than bad, and people will do better things and solve more problems, and the people of the future will be able to use these new tools and the new scaffolding that these new tools contribute to
44:45Um, if you think about a world that has, um, AI making a bunch of scientific discovery, what happens to that scientific progress is It just gets added to the scaffolding, and then your kids can do new things with it, or you in 10 years can do new things with it
45:00Um, but the way it's going to feel to people, uh, I think, is not that there is this like much smarter entity, uh, because we're much smarter in some sense than the great, great, great grandparents are, more capable at least, um, but that any individual person can just do more on that
45:21We're going to end it, so let's give Sam a round of applause
45:35[Music]