High Signal Podcasts Evidence ledger
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Sam Altman

CEO · OpenAI

Claims
128
Episodes
5
Shows
3
Named items
2

Books, apps, and tools

The evidenced stack.

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person / likes

Ilya

“I do think one of the many things that I really love about Ilya is he takes AGI and the safety concerns, broadly speaking, including things like the impact this is going to have on society, very seriously.”

Lex Fridman Podcast · 18 Mar 2024

Evidence receipt · Source ↗

book / uses

The Mind of Napoleon

“In fact, the best book I read last year is called The Mind of Napoleon, which is a book of quotes about his views on everything.”

Conversations with Tyler · 27 Feb 2019

Evidence receipt · Source ↗

Claim ledger

What Sam said.

128 transcript-backed records

01 / preference

The cost of screen up is higher, so I like to spend more time getting to know the people before saying, “Okay, you’re just going to do this, and I’ll trust that it’ll work out.

“The cost of screen up is higher, so I like to spend more time getting to know the people before saying, “Okay, you’re just going to do this, and I’ll trust that it’ll work out.”
Speaker
Sam Altman
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

04 / uncertainty

I don’t know what the right answer is yet, but my naive take is we should try to solve this problem urgently for people using rogue internet resources, and AI will just be a worse version of that problem.

“I don’t know what the right answer is yet, but my naive take is we should try to solve this problem urgently for people using rogue internet resources, and AI will just be a worse version of that problem.”
Speaker
Sam Altman
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

05 / belief

There’s a lot of arguments I’m tempted to give, but I think the intellectually most interesting one is we have no idea how much past human-level intelligence can go and what you can do with it as it does.

“There’s a lot of arguments I’m tempted to give, but I think the intellectually most interesting one is we have no idea how much past human-level intelligence can go and what you can do with it as it does.”
Speaker
Sam Altman
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

09 / belief

You’re the economist, not me, but I think there is some price point at a given level of safety where the demand for this will be overwhelming.

“You’re the economist, not me, but I think there is some price point at a given level of safety where the demand for this will be overwhelming.”
Speaker
Sam Altman
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

10 / belief

On the other hand, if ChatGPT shows you it’s guessed the best hotel, whatever that is, and then if you book it with one click, takes the same cut that it would take from any other hotel, and there’s nothing that influenced it, but there’s some sort of transaction fee, I think that’s probably okay.

“On the other hand, if ChatGPT shows you it’s guessed the best hotel, whatever that is, and then if you book it with one click, takes the same cut that it would take from any other hotel, and there’s nothing that influenced it, but there’s some sort of transaction fee, I think that’s probably okay.”
Speaker
Sam Altman
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

11 / belief

I think the most important thing AI will do is discover new science for all of us, and a lot of people will benefit from that, and people will start companies or get jobs doing that.

“I think the most important thing AI will do is discover new science for all of us, and a lot of people will benefit from that, and people will start companies or get jobs doing that.”
Speaker
Sam Altman
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

12 / uncertainty

Look, I don’t know if this is going to turn out to be a good sign or a bad sign, but our chip team feels more like the OpenAI research team than a chip company.

“Look, I don’t know if this is going to turn out to be a good sign or a bad sign, but our chip team feels more like the OpenAI research team than a chip company.”
Speaker
Sam Altman
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

15 / belief

One thing I believe in general related to this is that margins are going to go dramatically down on most goods and services, including things like hotel bookings.

“One thing I believe in general related to this is that margins are going to go dramatically down on most goods and services, including things like hotel bookings.”
Speaker
Sam Altman
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

17 / belief

The related thing, in the same way that people always want more energy if it’s cheaper, I think people will always want more compute if it’s cheaper.

“The related thing, in the same way that people always want more energy if it’s cheaper, I think people will always want more compute if it’s cheaper.”
Speaker
Sam Altman
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

19 / prediction

I guess, given the magnitude of what I expect AI economic impact to look like, I do think the government ends up as the insurer of last resort, but I think I mean that in a different way than you mean that, and I don’t expect them to actually be writing the policies in the way that maybe they do for nuclear.

“I guess, given the magnitude of what I expect AI economic impact to look like, I do think the government ends up as the insurer of last resort, but I think I mean that in a different way than you mean that, and I don’t expect them to actually be writing the policies in the way that maybe they do for nuclear.”
Speaker
Sam Altman
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

22 / prediction

I suspect there is something new to build that is going to replace a lot of the current office, productivity suite, whatever you think of docs, slides, email, Slack, whatever, that will be the AI-driven version of all of these things, not where you tack on the horrible — you accidentally click the wrong place and it tries to write a whole document for you or summarize some thread or whatever, but the actual version of you are trusting your AI agent and my AI agent to work most stuff out and escalate to us when necessary.

“I suspect there is something new to build that is going to replace a lot of the current office, productivity suite, whatever you think of docs, slides, email, Slack, whatever, that will be the AI-driven version of all of these things, not where you tack on the horrible — you accidentally click the wrong place and it tries to write a whole document for you or summarize some thread or whatever, but the actual version of you are trusting your AI agent and my AI agent to work most stuff out and escalate to us when necessary.”
Speaker
Sam Altman
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

24 / prediction

I was going to say, I don’t want to say GPT, whether it’s 6 or 7, but I think we will get to something where you will say, “This is not a long way to the very best, but this is like a real poet’s okay poem.

“I was going to say, I don’t want to say GPT, whether it’s 6 or 7, but I think we will get to something where you will say, “This is not a long way to the very best, but this is like a real poet’s okay poem.”
Speaker
Sam Altman
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

25 / prediction

” There’s this other category, third category, that gets very little talk, that I think is much scarier and more interesting, which is the AI models accidentally take over the world.

“” There’s this other category, third category, that gets very little talk, that I think is much scarier and more interesting, which is the AI models accidentally take over the world.”
Speaker
Sam Altman
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

27 / evaluation

I kind of dashed this tweet off and closed my computer, and it didn’t even hit my mind that it was going to be, really, a firestorm. It was that we made a decision, which I also think was a fair one, over the summer, that because there were new problems, and that particularly because we wanted to protect teenage users, we were going to heavily restrict ChatGPT, which is also always a very unpopular thing to do, and along with the rolling out of age-gating and some of these mental health mitigations, we were going to bring back and in some cases increase freedom of use for adults.

“I kind of dashed this tweet off and closed my computer, and it didn’t even hit my mind that it was going to be, really, a firestorm. It was that we made a decision, which I also think was a fair one, over the summer, that because there were new problems, and that particularly because we wanted to protect teenage users, we were going to heavily restrict ChatGPT, which is also always a very unpopular thing to do, and along with the rolling out of age-gating and some of these mental health mitigations, we were going to bring back and in some cases increase freedom of use for adults.”
Speaker
Sam Altman
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

28 / prediction

I think we’re really great at finding new things to do, new games to play, new ways to be useful to each other, to compete, to get fulfilled, whatever, but I do put a significant probability that the social contract has to change significantly.

“I think we’re really great at finding new things to do, new games to play, new ways to be useful to each other, to compete, to get fulfilled, whatever, but I do put a significant probability that the social contract has to change significantly.”
Speaker
Sam Altman
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

29 / prediction

We are going to try to make you a new kind of computer with a completely new kind of interface that is meant for AI, which I think wants something completely different than the computing paradigm we’ve been using for the last 50 years that we’re currently stuck in.

“We are going to try to make you a new kind of computer with a completely new kind of interface that is meant for AI, which I think wants something completely different than the computing paradigm we’ve been using for the last 50 years that we’re currently stuck in.”
Speaker
Sam Altman
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

30 / recommendation

Why don’t you go discover a cure for every disease, nuclear fusion, cheap rockets, the whole thing, and just license that technology?” It is not an unfair question because I believe that is the stuff that we will do that will be most important and make the most money eventually, but my story, my most likely story about how this works, how the world gets dramatically better, is we put a really great superintelligence in the hands of everybody.

“Why don’t you go discover a cure for every disease, nuclear fusion, cheap rockets, the whole thing, and just license that technology?” It is not an unfair question because I believe that is the stuff that we will do that will be most important and make the most money eventually, but my story, my most likely story about how this works, how the world gets dramatically better, is we put a really great superintelligence in the hands of everybody.”
Speaker
Sam Altman
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

32 / belief

Even the Turing test, which I thought always was like, this very clear milestone, you know, there was this like, fuzzy period. It kind of like, went oosh and bye, no one cared But, but I think the right framework is just this one exponential.

“Even the Turing test, which I thought always was like, this very clear milestone, you know, there was this like, fuzzy period. It kind of like, went oosh and bye, no one cared But, but I think the right framework is just this one exponential.”
Speaker
Sam Altman
Publisher
Latent Space

33 / belief

I do hope we do something at some point, but we want to find something that we feel like, if we don't do it, then we'll just be the same as them and not make, like, another thing that's, like, a tiny bit better on benchmarks. Because we think there's, like, a lot of potential.

“I do hope we do something at some point, but we want to find something that we feel like, if we don't do it, then we'll just be the same as them and not make, like, another thing that's, like, a tiny bit better on benchmarks. Because we think there's, like, a lot of potential.”
Speaker
Sam Altman
Publisher
Latent Space

34 / commitment

They would not have been the ones that turned out to work. So, by this idea of iterative deployment, which I think has been one of our most important safety stances ever and sort of confronting reality as it sits in front of us, we've made a lot of progress, and we expect to make more, and we keep finding new problems to solve, but we also keep finding new techniques to solve them.

“They would not have been the ones that turned out to work. So, by this idea of iterative deployment, which I think has been one of our most important safety stances ever and sort of confronting reality as it sits in front of us, we've made a lot of progress, and we expect to make more, and we keep finding new problems to solve, but we also keep finding new techniques to solve them.”
Speaker
Sam Altman
Publisher
Latent Space

35 / evaluation

Sometimes we're right, often we're not. But, if something starts working, or if something doesn't work that you thought was gonna work, our willingness to just say, we're gonna like, pivot everything, and do what the science allows, and you don't get to like, pick what the science allows?

“Sometimes we're right, often we're not. But, if something starts working, or if something doesn't work that you thought was gonna work, our willingness to just say, we're gonna like, pivot everything, and do what the science allows, and you don't get to like, pick what the science allows?”
Speaker
Sam Altman
Publisher
Latent Space

36 / evaluation

It was nine and then it went down to six, and then we couldn’t agree on who to add. And the board also I think didn’t have a lot of experienced board members, and a lot of the new board members at OpenAI have just have more experience as board members.

“It was nine and then it went down to six, and then we couldn’t agree on who to add. And the board also I think didn’t have a lot of experienced board members, and a lot of the new board members at OpenAI have just have more experience as board members.”
Speaker
Sam Altman
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

39 / belief

The thing that OpenAI, I think, does really well… This is actually an original Ilya quote that I’m going to butcher, but it’s something like, “We multiply 200 medium-sized things together into one giant thing.

“The thing that OpenAI, I think, does really well… This is actually an original Ilya quote that I’m going to butcher, but it’s something like, “We multiply 200 medium-sized things together into one giant thing.”
Speaker
Sam Altman
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

40 / belief

We had to go do two things that had never been done before that were both I would say quite significant achievements and then a lot of things like scaling it up that other companies have had to do before.

“We had to go do two things that had never been done before that were both I would say quite significant achievements and then a lot of things like scaling it up that other companies have had to do before.”
Speaker
Sam Altman
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

42 / belief

I’m excited about being smarter. And I know that sounds like a glib answer, but I think the really special thing happening is that it’s not like it gets better in this one area and worse at others.

“I’m excited about being smarter. And I know that sounds like a glib answer, but I think the really special thing happening is that it’s not like it gets better in this one area and worse at others.”
Speaker
Sam Altman
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

44 / belief

In this case, and I think one of the things with our structure that we maybe should have thought about more than we did is that the board of a nonprofit has, unless you put other rules in place, quite a lot of power.

“In this case, and I think one of the things with our structure that we maybe should have thought about more than we did is that the board of a nonprofit has, unless you put other rules in place, quite a lot of power.”
Speaker
Sam Altman
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

45 / belief

I think before we talk about a GPT-5-like model called that, or not called that, or a little bit worse or a little bit better than what you’d expect from a GPT-5, I think we have a lot of other important things to release first.

“I think before we talk about a GPT-5-like model called that, or not called that, or a little bit worse or a little bit better than what you’d expect from a GPT-5, I think we have a lot of other important things to release first.”
Speaker
Sam Altman
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

47 / belief

We’re very early in our explorations here, but I think what people want, or at least what I want for myself, is a model that gets to know me and gets more useful to me over time.

“We’re very early in our explorations here, but I think what people want, or at least what I want for myself, is a model that gets to know me and gets more useful to me over time.”
Speaker
Sam Altman
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

48 / belief

I think I have a pretty straightforward answer to this that maybe I can think of more nuance later, but the pros seem obvious, which is that we get better products and more innovation faster and cheaper, and all the reasons competition is good.

“I think I have a pretty straightforward answer to this that maybe I can think of more nuance later, but the pros seem obvious, which is that we get better products and more innovation faster and cheaper, and all the reasons competition is good.”
Speaker
Sam Altman
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

53 / belief

We wanted to get new board members in place first, but we clearly learned a lesson about structure throughout this process. I don’t have, I think, super deep things to say.

“We wanted to get new board members in place first, but we clearly learned a lesson about structure throughout this process. I don’t have, I think, super deep things to say.”
Speaker
Sam Altman
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

54 / belief

I mean, if the question is if we can build a better search engine than Google or whatever, then sure, we should go, people should use the better product, but I think that would so understate what this can be.

“I mean, if the question is if we can build a better search engine than Google or whatever, then sure, we should go, people should use the better product, but I think that would so understate what this can be.”
Speaker
Sam Altman
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

55 / belief

I was so caught off guard that it has definitely changed, and I really don’t like this, it’s definitely changed how I think about just default trust of people and planning for the bad scenarios.

“I was so caught off guard that it has definitely changed, and I really don’t like this, it’s definitely changed how I think about just default trust of people and planning for the bad scenarios.”
Speaker
Sam Altman
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

56 / belief

I think the board members are well-meaning people on the whole, and I believe that in stressful situations where people feel time pressure or whatever, people understand and make suboptimal decisions.

“I think the board members are well-meaning people on the whole, and I believe that in stressful situations where people feel time pressure or whatever, people understand and make suboptimal decisions.”
Speaker
Sam Altman
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

57 / belief

Artists were also super worried when photography came out and then photography became a new art form and people made a lot of money taking pictures. I think things like that will keep happening.

“Artists were also super worried when photography came out and then photography became a new art form and people made a lot of money taking pictures. I think things like that will keep happening.”
Speaker
Sam Altman
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

59 / belief

We all gain from experience over the course of our lives in varying degrees, and I’d like my AI agent to gain with that experience too. So if we go back and let ourselves imagine that trillions and trillions of context length, if I can put every conversation I’ve ever had with anybody in my life in there, if I can have all of my emails input out, all of my input output in the context window every time I ask a question, that’d be pretty cool I think.

“We all gain from experience over the course of our lives in varying degrees, and I’d like my AI agent to gain with that experience too. So if we go back and let ourselves imagine that trillions and trillions of context length, if I can put every conversation I’ve ever had with anybody in my life in there, if I can have all of my emails input out, all of my input output in the context window every time I ask a question, that’d be pretty cool I think.”
Speaker
Sam Altman
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

61 / belief

Intelligence is going to be more like energy or something like that, where the only thing that I think makes sense to talk about is, at price X, the world will use this much compute, and at price Y, the world will use this much compute. Because if it’s really cheap, I’ll have it reading my email all day, giving me suggestions about what I maybe should think about or work on, and trying to cure cancer, and if it’s really expensive, maybe I’ll only use it, or we’ll only use it, to try to cure cancer.

“Intelligence is going to be more like energy or something like that, where the only thing that I think makes sense to talk about is, at price X, the world will use this much compute, and at price Y, the world will use this much compute. Because if it’s really cheap, I’ll have it reading my email all day, giving me suggestions about what I maybe should think about or work on, and trying to cure cancer, and if it’s really expensive, maybe I’ll only use it, or we’ll only use it, to try to cure cancer.”
Speaker
Sam Altman
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

65 / belief

I think the past is a lot. I mean, we just look at what humanity has done in a not very long period of time, huge problems, deep flaws, lots to be super-ashamed of.

“I think the past is a lot. I mean, we just look at what humanity has done in a not very long period of time, huge problems, deep flaws, lots to be super-ashamed of.”
Speaker
Sam Altman
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

66 / belief

I think a mistake that you or I might make is to think that only the technical understanding matters, and that’s definitely part of the conversation you want that board to have, but there’s a lot more about how that’s going to just impact society and people’s lives that you really want represented in there too.

“I think a mistake that you or I might make is to think that only the technical understanding matters, and that’s definitely part of the conversation you want that board to have, but there’s a lot more about how that’s going to just impact society and people’s lives that you really want represented in there too.”
Speaker
Sam Altman
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

68 / belief

You and I may have different opinions about where on that privacy utility trade off for our own AI- …opinions about where on that privacy/utility trade-off for OpenAI going to be, which is totally fine. But I think the answer is just really easy user choice.

“You and I may have different opinions about where on that privacy utility trade off for our own AI- …opinions about where on that privacy/utility trade-off for OpenAI going to be, which is totally fine. But I think the answer is just really easy user choice.”
Speaker
Sam Altman
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

70 / observation

Most people don’t need all the way to 128 most of the time. Although if we dream into the distant future, we’ll have way distant future, we’ll have context length of several billion.

“Most people don’t need all the way to 128 most of the time. Although if we dream into the distant future, we’ll have way distant future, we’ll have context length of several billion.”
Speaker
Sam Altman
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

75 / belief

I think if you give people great tools and teach them to use them or don’t even teach them, they’ll figure it out, and let them go build an incredible future for each other with that, that’s a big deal.

“I think if you give people great tools and teach them to use them or don’t even teach them, they’ll figure it out, and let them go build an incredible future for each other with that, that’s a big deal.”
Speaker
Sam Altman
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

78 / belief

I think we’ve had our flare-ups, for sure, like any company, but I don’t think we have anything like what I hear about happened at other companies here on this topic.

“I think we’ve had our flare-ups, for sure, like any company, but I don’t think we have anything like what I hear about happened at other companies here on this topic.”
Speaker
Sam Altman
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

80 / prediction

I think that’s less important than the question you were getting at, which is, do we need a way to do a slower kind of thinking, where the answer doesn’t have to get… I guess spiritually you could say that you want an AI to be able to think harder about a harder problem and answer more quickly about an easier problem. And I think that will be important.

“I think that’s less important than the question you were getting at, which is, do we need a way to do a slower kind of thinking, where the answer doesn’t have to get… I guess spiritually you could say that you want an AI to be able to think harder about a harder problem and answer more quickly about an easier problem. And I think that will be important.”
Speaker
Sam Altman
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

81 / preference

Unlike hiring an executive where you need them to do one role well, the board needs to do a whole role of governance and thoughtfulness well, and so, one thing that Brett says which I really like is that we want to hire board members in slates, not as individuals one at a time.

“Unlike hiring an executive where you need them to do one role well, the board needs to do a whole role of governance and thoughtfulness well, and so, one thing that Brett says which I really like is that we want to hire board members in slates, not as individuals one at a time.”
Speaker
Sam Altman
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

82 / prediction

I expect that by the end of this decade, and possibly somewhat sooner than that, we will have quite capable systems that we look at and say, “Wow, that’s really remarkable.

“I expect that by the end of this decade, and possibly somewhat sooner than that, we will have quite capable systems that we look at and say, “Wow, that’s really remarkable.”
Speaker
Sam Altman
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

83 / evaluation

I think that’s a way more interesting, impactful, important question than how many jobs AI can do because it is a tool that will work at increasing levels of sophistication and over longer and longer time horizons for more and more tasks and let people operate at a higher level of abstraction.

“I think that’s a way more interesting, impactful, important question than how many jobs AI can do because it is a tool that will work at increasing levels of sophistication and over longer and longer time horizons for more and more tasks and let people operate at a higher level of abstraction.”
Speaker
Sam Altman
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

84 / prediction

I thought at some point between when OpenAI started and when we created AGI, there was going to be something crazy and explosive that happened, but there may be more crazy and explosive things still to happen.

“I thought at some point between when OpenAI started and when we created AGI, there was going to be something crazy and explosive that happened, but there may be more crazy and explosive things still to happen.”
Speaker
Sam Altman
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

85 / evaluation

I think the question behind that question is, do people who create valuable data deserve to have some way that they get compensated for use of it, and that I think the answer is yes.

“I think the question behind that question is, do people who create valuable data deserve to have some way that they get compensated for use of it, and that I think the answer is yes.”
Speaker
Sam Altman
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

86 / prediction

It’s closer to a beginning, but it’s much more of a mile marker than either of those things. But what I would say, in the interest of not trying to dodge a question, is I expect that by the end of this decade and possibly somewhat sooner than that, we will have quite capable systems that we look at and say, “Wow, that’s really remarkable.

“It’s closer to a beginning, but it’s much more of a mile marker than either of those things. But what I would say, in the interest of not trying to dodge a question, is I expect that by the end of this decade and possibly somewhat sooner than that, we will have quite capable systems that we look at and say, “Wow, that’s really remarkable.”
Speaker
Sam Altman
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

87 / evaluation

In fact, one of the things that I used to have and was super valuable was I used to have a good map of all or most of the frontiers in the tech industry. And I could sometimes see these connections or new things that were possible that if I were only deep in one area, I wouldn’t be able to have the idea for because I wouldn’t have all the data.

“In fact, one of the things that I used to have and was super valuable was I used to have a good map of all or most of the frontiers in the tech industry. And I could sometimes see these connections or new things that were possible that if I were only deep in one area, I wouldn’t be able to have the idea for because I wouldn’t have all the data.”
Speaker
Sam Altman
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

88 / preference

I’m sure there’s an ad unit that makes sense for LLMs, and I’m sure there’s a way to participate in the transaction stream in an unbiased way that is okay to do, but it’s also easy to think about the dystopic visions of the future where you ask ChatGPT something and it says, “Oh, you should think about buying this product,” or, “You should think about going here for your vacation,” or whatever. And I don’t know, we have a very simple business model and I like it, and I know that I’m not the product.

“I’m sure there’s an ad unit that makes sense for LLMs, and I’m sure there’s a way to participate in the transaction stream in an unbiased way that is okay to do, but it’s also easy to think about the dystopic visions of the future where you ask ChatGPT something and it says, “Oh, you should think about buying this product,” or, “You should think about going here for your vacation,” or whatever. And I don’t know, we have a very simple business model and I like it, and I know that I’m not the product.”
Speaker
Sam Altman
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

91 / uncertainty

The Finnish — I thought they stopped that experiment? So I don’t know how to comment on the results, but I would have loved it if there were results to discuss.

“The Finnish — I thought they stopped that experiment? So I don’t know how to comment on the results, but I would have loved it if there were results to discuss.”
Speaker
Sam Altman
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

101 / belief

I think the mimetic stuff is always super dangerous, but I don’t think you should ever try to be somebody else, or I don’t think you should ever even try to take too much inspiration from someone else’s life path.

“I think the mimetic stuff is always super dangerous, but I don’t think you should ever try to be somebody else, or I don’t think you should ever even try to take too much inspiration from someone else’s life path.”
Speaker
Sam Altman
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

103 / belief

I think being a single teen mother and coming through to the other side of that successfully is probably one of the hardest things that anyone can do in the world.

“I think being a single teen mother and coming through to the other side of that successfully is probably one of the hardest things that anyone can do in the world.”
Speaker
Sam Altman
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

104 / belief

I think building the Nuclear Navy is among the most impressive operational engineering accomplishments of human history, so we would definitely fund him.

“I think building the Nuclear Navy is among the most impressive operational engineering accomplishments of human history, so we would definitely fund him.”
Speaker
Sam Altman
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

105 / belief

We talked a bunch of times tonight about network effects. That would be the most powerful network effect the world has ever seen economically, and I think that would be cool.

“We talked a bunch of times tonight about network effects. That would be the most powerful network effect the world has ever seen economically, and I think that would be cool.”
Speaker
Sam Altman
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

106 / belief

I believe in my heart that it is, but I try so hard to avoid pessimistic people in my life that I don’t feel like I have enough of a dataset to answer that with any confidence.

“I believe in my heart that it is, but I try so hard to avoid pessimistic people in my life that I don’t feel like I have enough of a dataset to answer that with any confidence.”
Speaker
Sam Altman
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

107 / belief

I don’t feel uniquely or particularly well qualified to answer this, but I suspect it is doing something along the lines of providing fair financial infrastructure for poor people.

“I don’t feel uniquely or particularly well qualified to answer this, but I suspect it is doing something along the lines of providing fair financial infrastructure for poor people.”
Speaker
Sam Altman
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

108 / belief

I think one of the things that’s gone badly wrong in the United States is, we have now pursued for a long time a policy where we want housing to be an investment, not a consumption asset, and thus grow faster than the rate of inflation.

“I think one of the things that’s gone badly wrong in the United States is, we have now pursued for a long time a policy where we want housing to be an investment, not a consumption asset, and thus grow faster than the rate of inflation.”
Speaker
Sam Altman
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

109 / belief

The argument against a universal basic income that I am most sympathetic to is that it is a good reason to lower immigration, and I think increasing immigration — particularly high-skill immigration — into the US is one of the most important policy things we can do.

“The argument against a universal basic income that I am most sympathetic to is that it is a good reason to lower immigration, and I think increasing immigration — particularly high-skill immigration — into the US is one of the most important policy things we can do.”
Speaker
Sam Altman
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

111 / belief

There’s a statement here that’s just bad about the world, but I think if you look at most successful founders, they are pretty smart, upper-middle-class people.

“There’s a statement here that’s just bad about the world, but I think if you look at most successful founders, they are pretty smart, upper-middle-class people.”
Speaker
Sam Altman
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

112 / belief

I think that’s how I’d characterize myself: upper middle class, pretty smart, not a super genius by any means. It turns out I’ve met many people smarter than me, but I would say I’ve only ever met a handful of people that are obviously more curious than me.

“I think that’s how I’d characterize myself: upper middle class, pretty smart, not a super genius by any means. It turns out I’ve met many people smarter than me, but I would say I’ve only ever met a handful of people that are obviously more curious than me.”
Speaker
Sam Altman
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

113 / belief

We’re going to let these big groups of people work towards a common goal and a common vision with all the elements you need to make that work, and we, the government, are going to enforce that and protect that and let that happen.” That, I think, was the fundamental root.

“We’re going to let these big groups of people work towards a common goal and a common vision with all the elements you need to make that work, and we, the government, are going to enforce that and protect that and let that happen.” That, I think, was the fundamental root.”
Speaker
Sam Altman
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

114 / belief

What I meant more is, instead of one new center or two new centers, there will be 30, and there will be clusters in different places that don’t quite get to the density of the Bay Area but get beyond critical mass. I think we’ll just see that diffused throughout the world.

“What I meant more is, instead of one new center or two new centers, there will be 30, and there will be clusters in different places that don’t quite get to the density of the Bay Area but get beyond critical mass. I think we’ll just see that diffused throughout the world.”
Speaker
Sam Altman
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

115 / belief

One thing that I think is surprisingly awful about San Francisco and the social fabric of this city is, it’s never warm at night, or it only is four nights a year.

“One thing that I think is surprisingly awful about San Francisco and the social fabric of this city is, it’s never warm at night, or it only is four nights a year.”
Speaker
Sam Altman
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

117 / uncertainty

Whoever does it first I’ll be happy with. They don’t tell me as much about the Chinese projects, so I don’t know, but I’d be delighted if they did.

“Whoever does it first I’ll be happy with. They don’t tell me as much about the Chinese projects, so I don’t know, but I’d be delighted if they did.”
Speaker
Sam Altman
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

118 / evaluation

There’s lots of reasons the analogy doesn’t work, but this idea that a lot of things go wrong, you are unflappable, you never lose your cool, you know how to react.

“There’s lots of reasons the analogy doesn’t work, but this idea that a lot of things go wrong, you are unflappable, you never lose your cool, you know how to react.”
Speaker
Sam Altman
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

119 / commitment

I think building true, superhuman artificial intelligence and figuring out how we, as a collective humanity, decide what the world is going to look like on the other side of that and making sure that it is safe, that we retain autonomy and a governance system we like, and that the benefits of that are equitably distributed in the world is the most important thing to work on.

“I think building true, superhuman artificial intelligence and figuring out how we, as a collective humanity, decide what the world is going to look like on the other side of that and making sure that it is safe, that we retain autonomy and a governance system we like, and that the benefits of that are equitably distributed in the world is the most important thing to work on.”
Speaker
Sam Altman
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

120 / evaluation

I have thought a lot about this because the correlation is clear, that one of the most fun things about YC is that, I think, we have more data points on what successful founders and bad founders look like than any other organization has had in the history of the world.

“I have thought a lot about this because the correlation is clear, that one of the most fun things about YC is that, I think, we have more data points on what successful founders and bad founders look like than any other organization has had in the history of the world.”
Speaker
Sam Altman
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

121 / prediction

It does even feel to me, myself, this current generation of tech hyper caps, I’m almost willing to say this time it’s different, but I know in my heart that there will be technological change that will happen at a rate that the companies can’t do or require a level of risk they can’t take. It has been a bad bet to bet against new companies for centuries, and I think that will keep happening.

“It does even feel to me, myself, this current generation of tech hyper caps, I’m almost willing to say this time it’s different, but I know in my heart that there will be technological change that will happen at a rate that the companies can’t do or require a level of risk they can’t take. It has been a bad bet to bet against new companies for centuries, and I think that will keep happening.”
Speaker
Sam Altman
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

122 / recommendation

You need to be a great communicator, which I think is a very underappreciated skill, because you have to convince so many people to join you on this quest.

“You need to be a great communicator, which I think is a very underappreciated skill, because you have to convince so many people to join you on this quest.”
Speaker
Sam Altman
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

123 / preference

I think internalizing, truly, deeply internalizing that most things in life are not as risky as they seem, most things in life are two-way doors — you can come back — and that even if people that you work with or in the press or whatever call you idiots and say, “Oh!

“I think internalizing, truly, deeply internalizing that most things in life are not as risky as they seem, most things in life are two-way doors — you can come back — and that even if people that you work with or in the press or whatever call you idiots and say, “Oh!”
Speaker
Sam Altman
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

124 / preference

In some sense, the superhero I would most want to fund would be Batman because he doesn’t have superpowers, and he’s just a resourceful, driven dude to do the right thing.

“In some sense, the superhero I would most want to fund would be Batman because he doesn’t have superpowers, and he’s just a resourceful, driven dude to do the right thing.”
Speaker
Sam Altman
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

125 / evaluation

I think that’s actually the most common mistake to make in life. It is true that we are in a lull right now, but it is absolutely, categorically false that — unless the world gets destroyed in a very short term — that we will not have a bigger technological wave then we’ve ever had before.

“I think that’s actually the most common mistake to make in life. It is true that we are in a lull right now, but it is absolutely, categorically false that — unless the world gets destroyed in a very short term — that we will not have a bigger technological wave then we’ve ever had before.”
Speaker
Sam Altman
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

126 / evaluation

I think our greatest differentiator is not how we identify talent, although I will answer that question, but the fact that we treat our own business — we run Y Combinator in the way that we tell our startups to run as a successful startup, which almost no venture capital firm does.

“I think our greatest differentiator is not how we identify talent, although I will answer that question, but the fact that we treat our own business — we run Y Combinator in the way that we tell our startups to run as a successful startup, which almost no venture capital firm does.”
Speaker
Sam Altman
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

127 / preference

I think the way you become really great at venture capital is to accept that the only way to figure out the future of the world is to identify incredibly talented, smart, creative, original thinkers and back those people.

“I think the way you become really great at venture capital is to accept that the only way to figure out the future of the world is to identify incredibly talented, smart, creative, original thinkers and back those people.”
Speaker
Sam Altman
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler
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