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Sam Altman

CEO · OpenAI

Claims
128
Episodes
5
Shows
3
Named items
2

Books, apps, and tools

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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.

72 transcript-backed records

02 / 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

05 / 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

06 / 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

07 / 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

10 / 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

12 / 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

15 / 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

16 / 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

17 / 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

18 / 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

20 / 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

22 / 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

23 / 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

24 / 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

25 / 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

30 / 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

31 / 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

32 / 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

33 / 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

34 / 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

36 / 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

37 / 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

40 / 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

41 / 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

43 / 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

47 / 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

50 / 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

57 / 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

59 / 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

60 / 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

61 / 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

62 / 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

63 / 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

64 / 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

65 / 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

67 / 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

68 / 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

69 / 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

70 / 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

71 / 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
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