OpenAI Co-Founder Greg Brockman: AI, Sam's Firing, and the Race to AGI
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Greg Brockman recounts his journey from Stripe to co-founding OpenAI in 2015, driven by a conviction that independent research could rival giants like DeepMind despite early skepticism about resources. The organization struggled initially with recruiting top talent but eventually aligned its team around the vision of building human-level AI for broad benefit after an offsite meeting helped resolve internal tensions between existential questions and mundane office politics. As computational demands grew, Brockman recognized the limitations of nonprofit fundraising, prompting a strategic shift toward a for-profit structure to secure the necessary capital for AGI development while maintaining their core mission. This evolution was supported by key milestones such as the DOTA project, which demonstrated that massive compute could scale simple algorithms in complex environments without explicit programming, and early breakthroughs like unsupervised sentiment neurons that achieved semantic understanding through language modeling alone.
The narrative takes a dramatic turn with Sam Altman's firing in 2024, an event Brockman learned about during a board call where he was also removed but retained an advisory role before resigning immediately upon feeling the decision was unjustified. Despite fears of competitor poaching attempts over Thanksgiving weekend, strong loyalty emerged among collaborators who refused competing offers to rebuild OpenAI with Sam, leading to a rapid reconciliation within days that underscored the deep personal bonds formed during their shared mission. During his time off, Brockman explored applying AI models to DNA sequences for health applications meaningful to him and his wife before returning refreshed by reaffirming why the mission mattered most despite the personal pain he believed was necessary when building long-term value. He emphasizes making hard decisions decisively rather than dragging feet on wrong directions or people roles, prioritizing environment creation over quick wins while maintaining focus on goals aligned with human well-being rather than short-term gratification like hacking evaluation metrics.
Looking toward the future of AI development, Brockman highlights how models are accelerating their own progress through self-generated research ideas and experiments, particularly in chip design optimization and solving open math or physics problems. He stresses OpenAI's commitment to protecting against model distillation and avoiding the training of chain-of-thought outputs that might misrepresent actual decision-making processes, arguing that while reasoning provides interpretability, showing intermediate thoughts can compromise faithfulness regarding how answers are derived. The company is moving toward a compute-constrained world where value lies not just in accuracy but in deep problem-solving capabilities like software generation and enterprise knowledge integration, though current GPU availability falls far short of the billions needed for universal access to these transformative technologies.
OpenAI's strategy involves iterative deployment—releasing intermediate versions of technology so users can adapt and learn from real-world feedback—to ensure broad distribution rather than remaining an ivory-tower research project, while prioritizing safety not just for models but for societal resilience through infrastructure like roads and seat belts alongside regulatory guardrails such as privacy protections. Brockman argues that regulation should ensure equitable access to compute resources, prevent the concentration of economic value, protect privileged conversations in healthcare and legal contexts, and address concerns about data center resource usage while society prioritizes which critical challenges to solve first. Regarding job displacement, he posits that AI empowers individuals by lowering barriers to creation for those who leverage prior skills with new tools, envisioning a future where personal AGI acts proactively in users' lives, manages autonomous agent workforces around the clock, and provides trusted medical advice accessible globally while efforts are made to raise the floor so everyone accesses transformative opportunities like advanced healthcare. Ultimately, success is defined by achieving the mission of ensuring artificial general intelligence benefits all humanity through broad access, safety, and empowerment while mitigating risks via societal adaptation and responsible deployment strategies.
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So, how did it open AI come about? Well,
I knew I wanted to do a startup because
I felt like that was something
>> But you were just in a startup. Stripe
was a startup.
>> It's true, but I never I I felt like
Stripe, the problem
that we were solving was not my problem,
right? It wasn't the problem I'd grown
up thinking about. It was an important
problem and I I dedicated myself to that
mission for a number of years, but I
felt like it was going to succeed with
or without me. And so, then I had a
first moment to really think about what
is a mission that I want to dedicate
myself to where I would spend the rest
of my life working on this problem just
to see it play out in a slightly better
way. And it was very clear to me that
top of the list was AI.
Right? If you could actually make a
difference in how AI will play out in
the world
like that would be a life well lived.
>> When you were thinking about leaving,
Patrick told you to go talk to Sam
Altman. What happened in that
conversation?
>> Well, Patrick had said Sam has seen lots
of young people in your situation and
Patrick, I think, really hoped that Sam
would convince me to stay. A few minutes
of talking to Sam, he's like, "Okay, you
clearly have already decided. It is very
obvious." And so, he asked, "Well, what
are you planning on doing next?" And I
said, "Well, I'm thinking about doing an
AI company." And he said, "I'm also
thinking about doing something in AI. We
should keep in touch." So, I had talked
to Sam maybe one more time after
I was leaving Stripe. And he asked, "Are
you still thinking about doing something
in AI?" I said, "Yes." He said, "I'm
also starting to get more details and
putting together this dinner in
July and I flew out for the dinner.
And the thing that I remember was a
topic was, "Is it too late to start a
lab
with many of the best researchers? Is it
possible?"
>> And this is what year?
>> 2015. Right? Because you think about
just the degree to which
DeepMind had all the researchers, all
the capital, all the data, it just felt
like is it even possible to get
something off the ground still? People
came up with all sorts of reasons it was
hard. No one could come up with a reason
it was actually impossible. And so,
Sam and I driving back to the city that
night, I remember we looked at each
other and we said,
we got to do this.
Right? Like we just have to. And so,
next day I was full-time on putting this
together. And it was tough because it
was very ill-defined. We had mission, a
vision of saying, we think that we can
build human level AI, make it be
something positive for the world, make
the benefits
be something that are distributed
broadly.
But how? And how do you get people to
actually leave their jobs to come and
join this thing? Initially, the set of
people that I narrowed down to were
actually Ilya, Dario Amodei, Chris Ola,
and myself. That was going to be the
team. And we spent a lot of time
together, we spent a lot of time talking
about potential visions for the lab,
potential ways that things would work.
It didn't quite come together, and that
there was just partly a question of will
this have enough momentum? You know,
Dario felt like that he needed to go and
establish a name for himself, and he
wasn't sure if this was really going to
be it. It's a question of just how it
was all going to work. And meanwhile, I
was starting to get John Schulman
interested. He said that he was going to
do it. Dario and Chris ended up deciding
to go to Google Brain. And so, it was
really just, you know, Ilya, me, and,
you know, John starting to be maybe few
others. And so, I had a group of about
10 people
that many of them were saying, I'm
interested, but who else is in? I asked
Sam, okay, how do we break symmetry
here?
How do we actually get everyone to say,
all right, we're joining? And Sam's
suggestion was, invite people out for an
offsite.
So, we set up a thing in Napa,
and I actually made t-shirts.
Uh at the time we were going And this is
before they had joined. There was no
official offers, no one had joined, we
didn't have a structure, we had nothing.
Right? We just had an idea, we had a
vision, we had a mission. And we flew
people out, we drove up to to Napa
together, and it was an amazing day.
Right, the ideas were flowing. We came
up with what I would really say is
almost the
technical plan that we've pursued for
the past 10 years. Number one, solve
reinforcement learning.
Number two, solve unsupervised learning.
And number three was gradually learn
more complicated, in quotes, things.
After that offsite, I
sent offers to everyone and said, "Hey,
we want to get started in the next two
to three weeks.
Please let me know if you're in."
>> Why did you think that DeepMind had such
an insurmountable advantage?
>> It was very much the case that Google
DeepMind was the 10,000-lb gorilla in
the field. They just had lots of
capital.
They had the track record. This is
before AlphaGo, right? AlphaGo came out
a couple months later, but it wasn't a
surprise, right? It's like very much the
momentum was very clearly there. And so,
the question of is it really possible to
build something independent and new,
it wasn't obvious.
>> At what point did you realize that like
this nonprofit thing just wasn't going
to work?
>> In 2017, we started to think very hard
about, first of all, how do we really
achieve the mission? How do we actually
build an AGI? What will that look like?
And we started to do the math on
compute, and you start to realize that
it's going to take big computer.
And we came across a company called
Cerebras, which was building a unique
piece of computing hardware. And that
the kind of computer that they were
promising, we realized was going to be
far advanced of where our compute
calculations looked. And you start to
realize if we could buy a lot of those
computers, we could actually probably
succeed at building an AGI. If we could
get exclusive access to Cerebras, that
could give us an overwhelming advantage.
If we could buy
very large data centers, that could be
something unique as well.
And the thing about nonprofit
fundraising is I think that there is
essentially a cap to what is possible
there. And so, Elon, Sam, Ilya, and I
all agreed that the only path forward
for OpenAI, the only path to achieve the
mission, was to create a for-profit
entity associated with OpenAI of some
form. And so, we were committed to that
direction, and that is something that we
knew was the only way to achieve the
mission.
>> When was the moment that you realized
everything was going to change for you?
Was that DOTA, or was it before then or
after?
>> The way that OpenAI works is it's a
series of moments where you realize that
it's real now.
And every time you think that you
understand it, that it is really settled
in for you, you realize that there is a
new horizon you had not yet appreciated.
And so, along the way, I think that
there was the initial launch. It was
like, "Wow, we actually got a team
together. Now we can pursue this
mission." But you show up at the office
the next day, and you're like, "Well,
what do we do?" Right? We didn't even
have a whiteboard. Do you know, Ilya and
John wanted to write something on a
whiteboard. I was like, "I will get a
whiteboard. That's something I can do."
DOTA, we had our first big result.
Right? That really was like, "Wow, we
can actually accomplish something when
we put our mind to it." You can actually
see all this compute coming together.
You scale up the compute, you scale up
the result. There were multiple moments
with the GPT series, and I remember
actually an early moment was the
unsupervised sentiment neuron paper.
Have you Have you heard that one?
>> I've heard of it, but I haven't read it.
>> Okay. Yes, that one's That one's an
interesting one cuz it's 2017,
and it's really the first time that we
saw semantics arise from training on a
language modeling objective. So, you
train on learn the next character,
predict the next character, and then
suddenly you get a neural net that
understands sentiment, understands if
something is positive or negative. Much
harder than it sounds. But that was a
moment where you realize, "Wow, we are
building machines that can learn
semantics, not just where the commas are
and where the nouns and verbs are, but
it can really learn the meaning of
sentences." You got to push that. And
then, of course, when you see something
like a
I remember
we were playing with it and someone
asked,
"Why is this thing not an AGI?" Right?
It's like
actually really hard to put your finger
on it cuz you can talk to it fluently in
anything you want. It clearly wasn't an
AGI. It was lacking something, but just
if you'd describe your criteria for AGI
2 months prior, it probably wouldn't be
compatible with what GPT-4 was. And so
there are many moments along the way
where you feel like it's real now. It's
going to really happen. The economy is
going to transform into this
compute-powered world. And I think that
those moments are not yet at the end. I
think that we have many more
breakthrough moments where you realize
that the next stage is possible.
>> I thought Dota was like an incredible
moment because it was it wasn't um chess
like Deep Blue and it wasn't AlphaGo,
which is like computationally intensive
but very defined rules. It was actually
interactive against humans in a way that
like the world is sort of structured,
but you have all of this freedom.
>> Yeah, that was that was something very
compelling about it. And the ironic
thing is we'd actually set out with Dota
to develop new methods because the
reinforcement learning at the time was
clearly not going to scale. Right? That
the algorithm we use is called PPO. You
plan over every single time step.
There's no hierarchy. Whereas a human,
that's not how you plan your day. And so
we knew that this algorithm was
incredibly flawed, would never scale,
and had all these problems.
But you got to start somewhere. You got
to push your baselines to reach the wall
so you actually see the limits of what
good looks like with what you have and
then you can bring to bear a new
algorithm. And we just kept scaling PPO
and we exceeded the performance of the
best humans. And that itself was the
finding, right? That actually massive
compute with simple algorithms. Right?
That that is something where we can not
just doesn't just work in theory. It
works in practice. We can really make it
happen. And in this incredibly messy
environment where you cannot program it,
you cannot look ahead, you cannot do a
search, you just need this almost
human-like intuition. And by the way,
the neuron that we used, tiny tiny
little insect brain, similar number of
synapses as to truly an insect brain.
And you realize like, wait, what if you
had the same computational
approach, but scaled it up to something
that's much more human brain scale, what
would that be like?
Very very evocative question.
>> Is there a difference between reasoning
and predicting? You mentioned sort of
like predicting the next character,
predicting the next word versus actually
reasoning in first principles.
>> I think they're connected in a deep way.
So,
on the one hand,
just predicting what comes next sounds
like a pedestrian task. But if you
really can predict the next word out of
Einstein's mouth, you are at least as
smart as Einstein.
And you can make arguments, oh, well,
like, you know, it's but I I think that
those arguments fall flat, that there's
something there's something false there
because the point of prediction is not
about being able to predict what is
known. The point is you put yourself in
a new situation you've never seen before
and predict what comes next.
And I think that there's something
deeply connected to intelligence and
prediction that there's a long story of
academic literature and how you think
about this, compression, they're all
kind of part of the same thing.
Now, these reasoning models, the thing
that I think is very interesting is that
we train them with reinforcement
learning. And so, there's really back to
the original OpenAI plan, there's two
steps to it. The first is unsupervised
learning, you train a model just by
having it predict what comes next, and
there it's much more static data, it's
much more observational. Again, it's
data it's never seen before, situations
never seen before, but it is a situation
that is already happened. Then you do
reinforcement learning, which is you
basically have the AI learn its own
data, right? You have it make its own,
here's the action I'm going to take, you
get an observation from the world, and
you learn from that. And it's again, the
way you actually train it is still
predicting. It's trying to predict if I
take this action, what's the thing
that's likely to happen. And you
reinforce that depending on how good of
a job you did. And the beauty of that is
that it now is an AI that has this
background knowledge and has real world
experience. But fundamentally, the
technology that we used to train during
unsupervised stage and during the
reinforcing stage, they're exactly the
same. You are just predicting, but
you've changed the structure of the
data.
>> When did things start to get tense?
>> I think the thing about OpenAI is that
if you truly believe in the mission, if
you truly believe in the possibility of
creating machines that have the
intelligence level of humans,
it means the stakes always feel very
high. The question of who's making the
decision, the question of what are the
values that go into those decisions, the
question of these things that are maybe
mundane in a typical company that are
much more like office politics, start to
take on this existential weight. And I
think that that has colored a lot of how
OpenAI these more high high-profile
conflicts, you know, sometimes it's like
you put it in like even just
the question of who gets credit for a
particular thing, it suddenly takes on
this existential weight.
>> Well, that's where I was sort of
thinking of it this because it's like at
that point you probably realized this
technology is inevitable and it's going
to change the world. And that wasn't
broadly known to the world. And then I
would imagine there's people who like I
want to be front and center. I want to
take credit for this.
>> Yes. That that is the overwhelming
dynamic that I have observed in this
field. It's not just about OpenAI
actually. Like one observation I had
early on is that this technology is by
nature very fragmentary, right? That
it's
sometimes it, you know, like when you
have a lot of pressure, you can get a
diamond or you can get cracks. Often
you'll see diamonds form in pockets,
right? Teams of people that really work
together, that have a lot of high trust,
that know how to operate.
But sometimes you can see that they that
they splinter off and they kind of go
their own way. And I think within AI, I
think we've gotten some real benefits
out of diversity of approach and
different groups that are really pushing
each other in order to
both bring this technology
in a more beneficial way, sometimes how
to think about all the thorny questions
around safety, around what does it mean
to be safe, what does it mean to
actually deploy this technology, and how
to think about how to mitigate and but
also how to maximize those benefits. And
that's something where I think that
there's a lot of very healthy debate.
It's always gone on within OpenAI's
walls. Now it's starting to really
happen, I think, in the world. And I
think that's something that we as a
society really benefit from.
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>> Take me back to the moment you found out
that Sam had been fired. Where were you?
>> I was at home.
>> And what happened?
>> I got a text
saying, "Can we hop on a video call?"
So, I
hopped on the video call.
I noticed that
it was the board minus Sam who were on
there.
>> Did you know at that point?
>> No.
I mean, I inferred something was up.
>> But, cuz you're on the board.
>> I am on the board. I was on the board.
>> At this point.
>> Yes.
>> And then what happened?
>> I was told that the board has decided
that
Sam would be removed. And effectively,
the message that I got was the same
messaging that was in the public post.
And I asked if I could have any more
information.
I was told no, not right now.
And depressed on that, maybe another
time. And again, was told nothing more
to share.
And then was told, "Wait, there's more."
Also, that I had been removed from the
board, but would be
staying with the company because I was
very critical to
the company and the mission. I said,
again, I asked like any reasons,
any feedback.
Was told no.
Towards the end, was told that, "Hey,
like in this new setup that you will
start to get hopefully, you can get
feedback in this new configuration." And
so, that was the conversation.
>> What went through your mind?
>> It just wasn't right.
>> Was it anger?
>> No. I felt like I understood what had
happened. How long before you knew what
had actually transpired to sort of cause
this? Well, there's two parts to the
answer.
One is I feel like I still am learning
some additional facts, some additional
thing that was in someone's head. To
some extent it comes down to a lack of
communication, right? That you realize
that there are all these
different things that have buffered. And
to some extent, you know, approximately
I kind of knew. I was like, I understand
for every person here, I have a pretty
good model of
why they acted the way that they did,
but it wasn't what was most important to
me in the moment. I just knew that this
wasn't right. Right after I hung up the
call,
I talked to my wife and I said,
"Got to quit." And she said,
"I agree."
>> And you quit that day.
>> Yes.
And then what happened? That day when I
quit, I started to get all these
messages of people saying, "I don't know
what you and Sam are doing next, but I'm
with you. I want to go
start something with you." Like just
that was that was a real honest
surprise. I didn't really expect to get
that kind of support, that kind of
outpouring. There were a few
of my close collaborators who quit that
day as well. That's Yacob, Shimon,
Alexander,
and the five of us, so
those people plus Sam, we all got
together and we started to chart out
what a new company could look like. I
remember feeling that first day like,
"Okay, there's a 10% chance that we
actually get the company back, 10%." The
next day,
we set up a meeting at Sam's house. A
bunch of people from the company came by
and we showed the vision that we'd been
sketching out. So it was just really one
day in, you know, with this this fresh
picture of how we'd run the project and
we spent
that a bunch of time over that weekend
also negotiating with the board and the
company and trying to figure out is
there a path back together that makes
sense. That Sunday night,
the board replaced
Mira as interim CEO with
a new person and the company just
rebelled.
Like we'd actually been at the office,
we thought we were close to a deal, and
>> to come back.
>> back. Yeah, we thought that we had a
path. And then
the board made that change, and then
suddenly it was
everyone streaming out of the building,
and it was just like real chaos. I was
on video calls with many of the people
who had been interested in coming to
this new this new company saying it's
going to be okay, we have a plan, and we
expanded, you know, we'd been building
this little life raft, right, for the
small set of people we expected to want
to come. And suddenly it was like no one
wanted to be associated with this
this entity, right? People wanted to
you know, stand up for what they viewed
as right. Sam talked to Satya,
who we'd been talking about, hey, could
you be a funder? Could you, you know,
help help support this new endeavor? I
was like, hey, actually, could we expand
from the small life raft to like And
everyone said, yes.
Could we take everyone? And they're
like, all right, we'll figure it out
somehow. And a lot of people, this is
right before Thanksgiving, a lot of
people were supposed to be flying to
home, wherever that is, and instead they
canceled their flights, and the office
was packed. I was like, everyone was at
the office just to be there, be part of
it, and just, you know, even if they
couldn't contribute to any of these
conversations, that they just wanted to
be there as this history was made. Then
this petition starts to circulate. So
many people were trying to sign the
petition at once, it actually crashed
Google Docs. And so they you had to have
certain people who were designated as
the person you go to to actually put
your name on the document so you don't
have too many editors at once. I think
that that was a statement that that was
really heard loudly.
And I remember
you know, I probably got home around
like 5:00 a.m. or something, went to
sleep, and I woke up like 45 minutes
later, and I checked Twitter, and I saw
that Ilya had posted,
and had signed the petition, and it said
that he wanted the company to come back
together. And that was this real moment
of relief. I felt so much gratitude that
it just felt like okay, like we can put
this back together. We can get back to a
good track.
>> You and Neale had built this together.
What was it like trying to find your way
back to that relationship after?
>> Look, it was tough. It was definitely
that was definitely a very close
relationship. You'd been the officiant
at my civil ceremony.
Right, we we'd been through extremely
tough times together. And like any
relationship, you always have your ups
and downs. And we spent a lot of time
afterwards really talking things
through.
And really trying to understand and just
articulate some of the things that we
had let build up or had left unsaid
between us. And I think that we got to
through that process, I think we had
gotten to a really good place. And for
me, it was I felt like we got to closure
on on everything that had happened.
>> How did you feel about all the loyalty
you've inspired?
>> Deeply grateful.
Truly, it was never something that I
would have asked for and something I
never would have expected.
I think the way that I operate is I'm
very much a in the trenches kind of
leader. Try to lead from the front. And
sometimes when I do that, I don't always
Sorry, I'm getting a little emotional.
Um, but I don't always look back to see
if everyone's following. Like I just
like run right in. And when people do
when when people do come and really help
to build the thing, I just
it it makes me feel so grateful for them
and to feel like they have exceeded my
expectations in every way.
>> And so eventually everybody comes back.
>> I'll tell you, it was not guaranteed
because
throughout that weekend, all the
competitors were circling. Just imagine
this like feeding frenzy. People were
shaping up to do. People were getting
offers.
And we actually did not lose a single
person through that weekend. No one
accepted a competing offer.
>> I think that's incredible.
>> It really was.
>> That's more, you know, Coach Belichick
told me this actually,
uh, when we were talking about the best
teams, and he said, "They're not playing
for money, they're playing for the
person beside them."
And when you were saying that all these
people quit, it makes me think of that.
Like, and none of them left for
presumably more money, better offers.
Everybody was trying to circle and
poach, and
>> Yeah, it was a very that was a diamond
moment.
>> After all of this happened, you took
some time off. What was going on
internally with you?
>> That was an intense experience to go
through, an intense experience to come
back to,
and
honestly, just
one of the hardest moments for me at
OpenAI was
when Ilya left.
And it was maybe the only moment in
OpenAI's history where I felt like I
didn't want to do it anymore.
Um
I think I needed some time to
kind of find my way
back to remembering like why I was doing
this, and why it was so important, and
why it was worth the pain.
>> What did you do during the time off?
>> I trained language models on
>> That's when you learned how to do it,
right? Like, you did the self-study
thing I read on your blog.
>> Well, no, so I actually done that I
actually done that throughout the course
of OpenAI. Um, so I trained language
models on DNA sequences.
>> Oh, wow.
>> Yeah, so I basically got to take my
>> Arc?
>> For Arc Institute, yeah. And uh, it was
it was a very great experience. I took
my skills that I had and applied them in
a very different domain. A domain that's
very personally meaningful to both me
and and to my wife. You know, she has a
lot of health conditions, and that we
think about what AI can do for her
health, what it can do for the health of
animals. We're both very passionate
about just It's like this application
area that felt like maybe we could help
in this very different way from how
I've been pursuing this technology. So,
that was that was a was a very, you know
positive part of the of the experience.
>> If I were to say like open a Google
document, write out sort of what you
learned about yourself on one page from
this whole
starting to Sam getting ousted to you
quitting to inspiring all this loyalty
to the time off and then coming back,
what would you write?
>> I think I've just learned to just keep
going for something that's worth it.
Right, if you have a mission that
matters, then
the fact of
you keep going through the ups and the
downs. There're going to be moments
where it's
it's all over.
Moments where it's where so back. And
you just can't let those moments pull
you off course.
And I think that the degree of just
personal
resilience that you have to grow during
these times because if you're leading,
people look to you for that steadiness,
for that support, for the
direction that the whole thing will go.
And I think that a lot of what I've
tried to
grow
with is to really
be able to both understand the details,
right, of what we're doing, what the
implication will be of a choice,
but also be decisive. I think that that
there have been moments where I think
I've been
very much approaching OpenAI through a
lens of uncertainty, of feeling like
I don't know what the right answer is. I
don't know what the right way to build
this technology is or how do you answer
these very thorny questions,
but there's lots of people here who are
very smart who have very strong
opinions. And so I've really tried to
understand all those opinions and figure
out how to put them together. And
sometimes that's the right thing. And
sometimes that you realize that the
opinions are mutually contradictory.
They can't all be true at once. And
sometimes you do just have to pick. And
you know that that means that there's
going to be someone who's going to be
upset, someone who's going to quit,
someone who's going to feel slighted.
And I think that a lot of what I've
tried to do is have a stronger sense of
self and a stronger sense of
when there is conviction
that we need to act on it. And I think
of things that we have done
over the course of OpenAI, where I feel
like I wish that we had done it
differently, I think usually that's of
the form we dragged our feet on
something we knew we knew it wasn't
quite the right person in the role, we
didn't think this was like quite the
right technical direction, we didn't
think that this way of letting the
projects run was going to quite work,
but we just
waited too long. And so that's something
I try to learn from and and actually
which I try to grow truly every day.
When I reflect on both the course of
OpenAI
and Stripe and even rewinding to
college and the projects I worked on in
the past, I think that the way I tend to
operate is that I both
really love the day-to-day activity. I
love the individual contribution. I love
the software. I love the thinking
through the problem. But I also really
care about the environment in which
these things are done.
And I actually am willing to give up on
that, you know, type one fun of just the
quick hit, like you get to build the
thing, it's it's always cool, for
something that's more like type two fun
of it's painful in the moment, but it's
worthwhile. But the what you do is you
create an environment where everyone
else can get that
do the IC work, do the great the great
thing. And so really trying to build an
environment is something I just
gravitate towards. It's not always the
easiest, right? That you really do have
to be willing to take on great personal
pain. Like in the words of Ilya, Ilya
always says that you have to suffer,
right? If you're not suffering, like
you're not building value.
And I think there's deep truth to it.
>> Double click on that.
>> The Ilya perspective, I think on
it's it's funny because he has a
particular way of talking that I think
is very unique to him and that there's
always deep inspiration
in the words that he chooses. And this
picture of suffering was something that
that we thought about throughout the
course of OpenAI where it's like we had
so much uncertainty from the beginning.
Is this thing going to work? And there's
many reasons why it might not work, why
it should not work, why you could even
say it cannot work, right? Whether it's
how do you get the people, how do you
pursue the technology, like how do you
get enough capital, how do you keep
people motivated, like how do you make
the right decisions? Like each of these
things is extremely hard, extremely
uncertain. And it's easy to just sweep
the problems under the rug and just
blindly say go. And I think that is the
negative side of like Silicon Valley
culture, right? Certainly Silicon Valley
perception, right? It's just the
you just kind of blindly do the thing
and you kind of do a reality distortion,
whatever it is.
But I don't think that works in AI and I
don't think that works for OpenAI. I
don't think that's how we've operated
ever. I think the way that we have
always operated is to say encounter the
hard truth, understand
science the reality as it is. And that
is I think something that's contributed
to the successes we have had of thinking
about the problems differently, of not
being
happy with even in the early days we
were thinking about, okay, if we just
write some papers
and publish them, it'll be great, we'll
get citations, we'll get you know, we'll
be the coolest people at these
conferences, but will we achieve the
mission?
Like how is it that you do that activity
and then AGI goes better for the world?
They're not connected, right? It's not
enough. Maybe it's a foundation, maybe
it's a step, but it is not sufficient.
And so then you start really thinking
about these bigger picture questions of
well, what it would what would it take
to build an AGI? And not pleasant,
right? Because you realize there's no
path. You realize you need dollars.
You don't have any mechanisms going to
allow you to raise dollars and you can
try hard. We did try hard. We tried
extremely hard, but you know, maybe
you're raising a hundred million
dollars, you could do five hundred
million dollars, great, but a billion?
Pretty hard. And you look at what OpenAI
has been able to accomplish with the
resources we have been able to raise
to further that mission, there truly
would be no other way to do it besides
having leaned into the suffering and
trying to understand the truth of what
it is we're trying to accomplish.
>> What's a lesson you've had to learn more
than once?
>> Make the hard decision. Have the hard
conversation.
>> What's the best advice you've ever been
given?
>> I would actually say it was from my
Harvard freshman uh writing class
of
just keep cutting words
in order to be clear and communicate
well.
>> How do you filter information?
>> I read a lot. Triage aggressively.
>> Who are your role models and why?
>> I would say
Gauss and Descartes
as
people who are incredibly thoughtful,
very much ahead of their time, very much
visionaries who came up with real
breakthroughs that I think transform how
we think and and how we live.
>> What do you want non-tech people to know
about AI?
>> That it's going to be a force for good
in their personal life that they'll
benefit from and will help advance
science, medicine, and really lift up
everyone.
>> What does the world get wrong about Greg
Brockman?
>> I think people don't
understand how focused I am on this
mission
in a way that
I think has been
very personally painful
at many turns.
But I just believe this technology can
just help
empower people and benefit everyone and
I really want to help make that happen.
>> Why is OpenAI so bad at naming models?
>> [sighs and gasps]
>> That one I can't tell you.
>> Are we near the point where AI makes AI
go parabolic?
>> I would say we are in this phase where
you apply AI to its own development
process and it's going to to faster and
faster. And
that is
something that's been happening really
I mean certainly since ChatGPT in many
ways, right? We use ChatGPT to make our
development process
10%, 20% faster. Now we have these
amazing coding tools which have truly
revolutionized
how software engineering is done. And
most of what we do in the production of
models is
bottlenecked by software. It's about
implementing these systems. It's about
scaling them up. It's about managing
these massive computers.
And we're going to be hitting a phase
soon where the AI will also come up with
its own research ideas and test those
out, run experiments.
And so I think that the
speed of iteration and innovation
is going to continue to increase
as a result of what we're producing.
>> What percentage of the code is now
written by AI?
>> It's hard to know what percentage of the
code is not written by AI. It's a
vanishing fraction. The actual writing
of code currently
the AI is much better than humans at
writing code. Given the right context,
given the right structure. Now there's
parts of the actual structure of the
code that our human experts still are
much better at.
Right? That that's about thinking about
how the modules should be laid out, how
the pieces should work. Maybe the
definition of certain kinds of of
interfaces. But the actual writing of
code is essentially all AI now.
>> Is it coming up with novel ideas that
you wouldn't have thought of?
>> I'd say that where we are is we're
getting close. So we've seen, for
example, in chip design, so in the
design of our own chip last year, we
applied our technology to
trying to get a better
fit to actually shrink the area used by
the the circuits. And there we found
that the optimizations that the model
produced were actually on our list. So
it didn't come with something novel and
new that no human would ever would have,
but it implemented it faster in a way
that we wouldn't have had time to
accomplish. If you look at math and
physics, we now are solving open math
problems. We're solving
open physics problems. And actually have
resolved this particular physics problem
recently in quantum physics in the
opposite way that the community
expected.
And with a you know, beautiful elegant
formula, it's like it's really
happening. So, new ideas from these
models extremely doable. We're starting
to see it in some of these domains. Now,
applying it in harder and harder domains
or ones that require more real-world
context and things like that,
we're starting to see it. We have line
of sight for how to accomplish it, but
we've a lot of work to do.
>> Why do models feel like they have a
political leaning to them, like a
political bias on those?
>> So, we put a lot of effort in to
neutrality for our models to have them
represent truth. And
you can see exactly the values that go
into our models on our website. We have
a publicly published spec which defines
and you can give feedback on the
different ways we want our model to
behave. We've spent a lot of effort to
really get to this
neutral point of view and trying to be
fair and balanced. And I think that
sometimes when you see these screenshots
on Twitter that they're not always fully
honest themselves in terms of where they
came from, either because there's some
memories that
are behind the scenes that tweak the
answer in a certain way or hidden
instructions or previous parts of the
conversation. And so, sometimes it's
also there's just no right answer. And
so, you you know, you can have like a
question say, "Answer in one word." And
no matter which one you say, you're
going to get some sort of claim of bias.
And so, I think that to some extent the
core of it in my mind is that we are
yeah, we care a lot about truth and
about having an AI that really
represents you.
>> Do you think the models evolve to tell
us what we want to hear if they're based
on reinforcement learning? So, if I lean
left, it's going to tell me an answer
that leans left, or if I lean right,
it's going to give me an answer that
leans right.
>> Well, so we've actually gone through an
evolution of how we train the models
to user preferences.
And that we've seen that at one point,
like last year, that the models really
did start to lean into telling you what
you wanted to hear, saying, "Oh, that's
such a great answer."
And we've reacted to that. We said that
this is not how we want our models to
operate, and we made changes. Cuz the
true thing we want the models to be
aligned to is helping you solve your
goals, your long-term goals.
Right? And maybe in the moment, it feels
good to be told, "That was a great
question, best question anyone's ever
asked."
But that's not what you actually want.
Okay. Maybe there's some people, but uh
it's not it's not what most people truly
want.
And so, we've actually made great
technological improvements to make sure
that our AI training does not result in
what's called hacking the grader. Right?
We really want to make sure that there
is a good signal there that is about the
goal, not just your short-term, what's
going to get you a quick hit. And that
to me is maybe the most important
part of the vision for where our
personal AI, personal AGI, is going to
take us is to really make sure it's not
just about something that looks good in
the moment. It's really about alignment
with your long-term well-being, your
long-term goals, the thing that you
actually want. And that is what I think
will most empower people, right? It's
really put you in the driver's seat,
because you will have this
entity that is there operating on your
behalf 24/7, right? You're asleep, it's
out there trying to figure out what is
it that Shane wants? How can I do it
better? And
is actually able to accomplish it.
>> Are we in a global AI race?
>> I think we're certainly in a global AI
renaissance, and I think that the
dynamics between countries are not yet
fully defined. We have this
concentration of
where the breakthrough algorithms come
from
in
the US, in western companies.
There's clearly a lot of innovation
happening around the world, but I think
exactly the balance of dynamics and
how
like which countries rely on which
providers, all of that is something that
I think is still being determined.
>> Is there a consequence, do you think,
for the United States not being the
first country to reach AGI?
>> Well, I do think that leading in AI is
very critical for America.
Because I think that this is how you can
ensure that democratic values are
protected and preserved, and
I think that every country is also
starting to realize that they need some
sort of sovereign AI strategy. They need
to, if this is becoming the basis of
economic security, of national security,
they need to participate somehow.
And
if you look at a lot of the efforts by
the United States to think about how to
manage chip exports, how to think about
technology exports, there's something
where if you lean too far out, then
everyone else has to develop their own
competitor or rely on
someone else who's who's building this.
If you lean too far in, then maybe you
lose your advantage. And the question is
how do you balance those? How do you
maintain your leadership?
But leadership is not just about being
ahead. Leadership is about also bringing
along the world with you.
>> Are other countries stealing
advancements? I've been reading a lot
about distillation.
>> There's certainly a lot of attempts to
distill models,
and that comes from companies in the US,
it comes from from all over the world.
But I think that it misses the core
point, which is that the way this
technology is developing is it is on an
exponential.
And anytime we have a model, we've
already moved on to the next one. We're
already moving to the next level. So we
put in a lot of effort to protect
against distillation, make it harder to
do,
especially with things like chain of
thought and other parts of the model
that are not really necessary to get the
benefits to someone, to get the outputs
to someone.
But, that the core
advantage that we have, the strength
that we're building up over time, is
really about not just any one model.
It's about the
machine that makes the models.
>> Oh, is that why you guys stopped showing
reasoning?
>> That is part of it. So, there's two
reasons.
One is to think about distillation, but
the second, in some ways more important,
is that
we had this insight when we first
developed the reasoning paradigm,
that it gives us
a
interpretability mechanism we had not
been anticipating, because you can
really read the model's thoughts. You
can see exactly how it got to an answer.
So, you can interpret
how like, what was actually motivating
that answer.
Now, the problem is, if you train the
model to have a chain of thought that
looks good,
then you lose all the faithfulness,
right? It's just going to be like the
model knows that part of the answer that
the that is desired is for the chain of
thought to look a certain way, and so it
may not be representative of how it
actually arrived at that answer anymore.
And so, we were we made an early
decision to say we want to avoid any
temptation to train these chain of
thoughts to look
favorable, to look like something you
could present to a user. And so, that
really made us lean out for multiple
reasons, for competitive reasons, for
safety reasons, from the idea of showing
these intermediate thoughts.
>> It seems like the current trend right
now is to release preview models. Is
that because we're computer constrained,
do you think?
>> I would say that we
in general are heading to a compute
constrained world.
Like, if you think about the amount of
value that these models can produce for
someone,
it's extreme, right? It's not just
answering a quick question anymore.
It's not just even answering, you know,
giving you access to health information.
It's really going deep and spending a
lot of tokens to put together a bunch of
different data sources, search through
your enterprise knowledge base to
actually be able to solve this hard
problem, to write that software that
that's better than a human would be able
to, all of that is something that is
like hard. And if you look at the
progress that we made between GPT 5 to
5.1 to 5.2 to 5.3 Codex to 5.4, it's
been extreme and these models are
getting extremely
better at understanding your intent,
molding to what you want to accomplish.
And we also put them in these surfaces
like Codex that make them very usable.
So that you as a developer, you can
really fly, right? That you can achieve
more than you would have dreamed
otherwise. And
all of this is powered by compute
fundamentally and there's not enough
compute in that
if you just wanted enough compute for,
you know, you wanted one GPU for every
person in the world, you're talking like
8 billion GPUs.
We are not on a trajectory to build
anywhere near that level of compute,
right? It's like, you know,
hundreds of thousands of GPUs. Like
that's a pretty big fleet these days.
Millions of GPUs coming up. It's not
surprising that there is too little
compute in the world and that we're
going to need much more in order to
really be able to bring this technology
to everyone. And then in terms of the
training, I'd say that the way that we
tend to launch things, so we have put in
a lot of effort to make sure we are
building compute in anticipation of what
we see coming. And so I think we're
going to be very focused on our mission
of bringing these models to everyone,
making them widely available.
>> You guys were teased for putting so much
effort, money into data centers.
How do you think that's playing out now?
>> Well, I think it's going to give us an
advantage.
And I think it's going to be something
that's an advantage not just for the
business, but for actually delivering on
the mission of bringing this technology
to everyone.
>> Cuz you guys, like you saw that way in
advance. You get teased for it by almost
all of your competitors.
>> Mhm.
Who's laughing now?
>> Yeah.
>> [snorts]
[laughter]
>> I I I I think that our competitors are
not a good time on compute. Let me put
it that way.
>> But you must have seen something that
they didn't see. Like that's the I mean,
everybody was in a very similar or it
seems at least from the outside.
Everybody was in a very similar
technological space. They all knew this
was coming. And yet you guys had the
boldness to make that bet.
With a hundred billion dollars. Like
>> But that is the core of Open AI is
really encountering reality as it is.
Really thinking about what is the
implication of what it is we'll
accomplish in the next six months, the
next 12 months, the next 10 years.
And that is true for the grand mission.
It's true for
day-to-day how we design different
pieces of our software.
And it's true for things like
scaling up compute. And I think that we
are
deeply motivated by bringing this
technology to everyone. And we think
about lots of different mechanisms for
how to do that well and safely.
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Do you think data centers eventually get
dedicated towards a problem? Like,
you'll have a huge data center in North
Dakota and it's just on solving cancer
and that's all it's doing.
>> Yes.
>> How far away are we from that?
>> I think that this kind of thing
happening this year is not out of the
question. And it's really amazing, if
you think about it, having this
giant machine, right? And have you have
you been to any of these data centers?
>> No, I've seen them online, but never in
person.
>> It is a very different experience to
walk amongst these racks, right? To walk
down the the rows and you look at the
cables that are all perfectly exactly
the right the right length and you just
realize
that what
a data center is is a massive machine.
These are maybe the biggest machines
that humanity creates. And then you ask
the question of why. Why do we build
these machines? Why is it worthwhile?
And it is because they have the
potential to solve problems that matter
for people, right? To solve, you know,
cures for cures for cancer, to help
people run businesses, to
you know, sometimes maybe it's mundane
queries. The purpose in my mind is
really about how do you deliver value?
How do you deliver on people's goals?
And I think the opportunity presented by
these massive machines targeting one
problem is something we have not yet
really internalized.
>> But if we're computer constrained, like,
how do you you who to serve? Like, why
are you serving me when I'm like trying
to make an image over like solving
cancer?
>> Well, this is going to be the most
important question for society to
answer. Where does the compute go? What
problems are worthy? And there's lots of
worthy problems, but you need to
prioritize them cuz you only have so
much compute. And so, one thing we
really believe in is that everyone is
going to need access to compute. And so,
that's why we have a free tier of
ChatGPT. We've really put effort into
making sure that people are able to use
this technology, that it's
because we believe that is core to what
we're doing here.
We think that putting this technology in
people's hands, that empowers them, that
lets them achieve goals. It helps them
also understand the technology, right?
It's something that helps them then
shape how does this technology slot in?
You could take a very different approach
and say, "Well, it's all about the ivory
tower. It's all about the just solve the
problem and we will then distribute the
technology breakthroughs in some way."
And I think there's merit to
that as well, but that's not where I'd
put the the balance of of what we do,
right? I think that that is very much a
like we do want to make great strides on
specific problems, but I think that that
should be in service again of the we
want the benefits of this technology to
be broadly distributed.
>> How do you think about that internally
just at OpenAI between consumer and
enterprise?
>> Well, a lot of what I've been thinking
about recently has been focus.
Because this field, it is opportunity
incarnate, right? It's like you can take
AI and apply it to any problem.
Any sort of thing you want to build,
it's now on the table.
And the problem that we have is that
there's only so much compute.
Where do you want to put it? And so, you
need to have synergies. You need to have
return to the fact that you have
multiple things happening, that they all
add up. 1 + 1 = 10. Like, that's where
that's the dream. That's the goal. And a
lot of what I think is important for
this next phase of OpenAI, very clearly
enterprise because the economy is
becoming this compute-powered economy
before our very eyes. It's happening
right now. Like we've seen this with
software engineering and it's going to
happen with every single field of
work people do with a computer.
Everyone's computer work like is going
to be something where
rather than you doing work with your
computer, your computer's going to do
work for you.
It's like truly going to be amazing. And
so we need to be there to help people
deploy these models, figure out how to
utilize them, figure out how to get the
most benefit out of them.
And by the way, there's also going to be
a blurring of the line between what is
enterprise and what is consumer because
entrepreneurship is going to become far
easier than ever before.
Like we're seeing this already. And even
for example
one of my friends was describing that
his sister was describing this app that
she really wished someone had created,
that she had this picture of like
exactly what she wanted. And he in the
meanwhile was typing into to Codex,
uh-huh, uh-huh, and then pushed enter.
And a few hours later, he shows her this
app. And she's like, "Wait, what what
what is this? Like where did this thing
come from? Who built this?" And he said
"You did."
And that is I think just an amazing
thing where you realize anyone can be a
builder. Like these tools at Codex is
for everyone. It's not just for software
engineers. It's like everyone now can be
a software engineer if they have a
vision, if they have this agency that
they have a thing that they want to
accomplish. Like you now have this magic
tool that can do it.
And then on the consumer side
the thing about consumers it's too broad
of a term. Right? That there's lots of
different things. There's like
entertainment, there's a bunch of things
in self-expression, and there's also
solving goals. And the aspect of
consumer that we're really dialed in on
is solving goals. Like we believe that
this technology
you'll get smartphones. That's like 4
billion people use them.
All those people should have a personal
AI, a personal AGI that's out there
that knows them well, that has their
personal
context that is trustworthy that they
can ask for advice, but that also knows
them so well that
you know, if your favorite musician is
in town,
it just goes and proactively purchases
tickets and maybe it knows like, oh, I
should check in before doing this or
maybe it knows, yep, that just like I
got to get do this and I I have I prior
approval. Like that level of having an
AI that knows you and can help you
achieve whatever it is you want to
achieve and help you flush out what are
your goals. You should still set those
goals. They should be your goals.
Right, you should be in charge, but that
is something we want to create and that
is something I think that not just 4
billion people are going to want and
need. I think it's going to be 8 billion
people. I think that the whole planet is
going to really benefit from and need
access to a personal AI, personal AGI.
And so you look at those two dimensions
of the knowledge work and broad
distribution of access to energetic
system and we want to build those two
aspects and they come together because
ultimately they're the same technology.
Ultimately you want an AI that is there
in the cloud that has access to
information that is trustworthy, that is
able to give good answers and able to
take actions on your behalf.
Whether it's building, whether it's in
your personal life and maybe you have
multiple instances of it, but
fundamentally it is one technological
system.
>> Do you think we'll have data centers in
space?
>> I think we're going to have data centers
everywhere.
>> How far away do you think we are from
that?
>> Well, data centers in space has a lot of
has many technical problems associated
with it. Even for example, the data
centers we build today
are very finicky.
Right, they're these massive machines
with
very breakable, very expensive
components. We've had many issues in the
past where the cables were just too
taut, just literally like two two tight
of cables and then you get signal
integrity issues and the computer
doesn't work. And so figuring out how do
you maintain systems today? It's people
go and physically them. Probably will
move to robotics.
So, I think figuring out how to solve
some of these technical problems are
going to be very important dependencies
as we think about putting them in you
know, you people talk about putting data
center
in, you know, various difficult
locations. Um space feels like a like a
grand challenge, but I think that we
have going to have such need for compute
that we need to be thinking about all
options.
>> What is iterative deployment and why do
you do it?
>> Well, iterative deployment is one of the
core pillars of how OpenAI has
approached how to get this technology to
benefit people and to achieve our
mission.
And this is something that I think I
think I was probably the person who
articulated those two words. But this
spirit is something that really emerged
as we thought about our first product
deployment and really thinking about how
does that connect to what we're trying
to do. And you realize that there were
two different routes that you could take
in terms of thinking about the you want
to build an AGI that's going to benefit
people, how do you do it? And one is you
go for kind of build it in secret. You
don't deploy anything. You have a lot of
time to just kind of polish it, get it
right. But then at some point you push a
button and you say deploy.
And I remember thinking about could I
sign up for that strategy? Could I be
accountable for that strategy? Do you
want to be
sitting in a room thinking about, okay,
we ran all our tests. Are we ready to
deploy? And you've never deployed
anything ever before.
Right? That's your first contact with
reality.
And it's a very powerful system that's
going to really change the world.
Like that is a very tough problem set.
But instead, what about if you take an
approach where
this is your hundredth system.
You've had to solve this problem 99
times before with systems of increasing
power. And the world has also had a
chance to adapt to them, to reconfigure
around them. And we learned very early
on with GPT-3. We got to see this very
concretely what it's like to deploy
something where we spent a lot of time
thinking about what are all the misuses
of GPT-3, what are the ways it could go
wrong. We thought about misinformation,
we thought about these kinds of, you
know, grand pictures. And you know what
the number one misuse of GPT-3 was?
>> What?
>> It was medical spam, like advertising
different drugs to people. Right? It's
like not something we ever would have
thought of as a problem,
>> [clears throat]
>> but we see it in front of our eyes and
we get a chance to react and learn from
it. And so iterative deployment is the
idea that we will bring intermediate
intermediate versions of this
technology. Now, it's not an excuse to
just blindly deploy, right? You still
need to think at every step about what's
our best view on all the ways this might
be misused, what are the downsides, what
are the risks? Let's mitigate those, but
you get to see it. You get to see if
you're right, learn from reality, and do
better the next time.
>> I think people don't understand the
extent of which like this is all new.
There's no playbook. Like you're
figuring this out as you go as well on
the most rapidly deployed technology in
the world perhaps that's so powerful.
>> It is true
that at various points in OpenAI's
history, we've had some hope that, "Hey,
there are people who have deployed
transformative technologies before.
Maybe they can tell us the answers."
And it's never been so simple. They do
have wisdom and insights, and that's
something that I think we've really
incorporated, but we realized that we're
the closest ones to this technology.
That by virtue of creating it, we have
an understanding of the ways in which we
could shape it. That is hard for someone
who isn't so close to it to opine on, to
advise on. And I think that one
observation I have is that the right
choices are extremely specific to the
facts of the technology. There's
different pressures that are exerted by
cell phones versus,
you know, mainframe computers versus AI
versus electricity. Each one of these
has its own unique proclivities and
problems. That's ways that they're being
developed. The individuals doing it
matter too, right? The dynamics between
different humans and these human factors
have been hugely impactful for how AI is
playing out today in front of our eyes.
I think that a lot of what we spend our
time doing from the beginning of OpenAI
and really even before is you spend a
lot of time dreaming. You spend a lot of
time a lot of time really thinking about
all the implications of what you might
do. And I think that one thing I've
observed is that we haven't really been
surprised by some moments along the way,
but we have been surprised by
when they arrive, how hard they are to
accomplish,
exactly the order in which we see them.
And that the world that we are moving
towards is I think one that is
in many ways more wonderful and
awe-inspiring than many of the ones we
anticipated.
>> If one
frontier model puts safety as a primary
concern
and another frontier model doesn't, how
do you view that competition playing out
over time?
>> Well, I think we have found that safety
is actually a core product feature. Like
no one wants a model that is not aligned
with them.
Right? You want a model you can trust
that
does the right things in
any circumstance you give it.
And so we have invested I think we've
actually invested possibly far more
than certainly people perceive and
possibly more than any other lab in
safety, right? That we have in ChatGPT
the broadest deployment of AI
these language models in the world used
by the most people.
We have to care.
We've always cared, but you really see
it in terms of us being able to bring
this technology to so many people.
So I don't think that there's a
sustainable state where
the people who are building this
technology and having successful
products are not also investing super
hard in safety. And I think that
actually the challenge
is a little bit about if you step back,
because there are some aspects of what
it means to deliver safety that are not
necessarily short-term. You have to
think long-term for your not just your
business, but for what it is that you're
creating. And some of this is about how
you train the models, some of this is
about how do you get your feedback loop.
But I would just say that we are
committed to safety as part of our
mission, and that's something where I
think it has played out
in our products and in the world. One
thing that people also miss is that it's
not just about the safety of the model,
it's about the resilience of society.
If you look at how transformative
technologies enter the world, that
society builds around them about their
strengths and their risks. You think
about engines, right? You build cars,
but you also need seat belts, you also
need to have roads, and you reorient
cities around the fact of this is how
this technology works. You think about
electricity, you have various safety
standards, you have different kinds of
where you're allowed to put the
electric poles, right? And high-voltage
lines and all these things.
And I think the same will be true for
AI, that it's not just about the
technology itself, it's not about the
model itself. It's really about how do
they integrate into the world with a
society that is resilient. And that is
something we're investing in very
significantly. The OpenAI Foundation has
this as one of its key focuses of trying
to help society
invest in and build a resilient layer
for AI.
>> What do you think regulation for AI
should look like?
>> Well, I think that there's a number of
different pieces to what regulation for
AI needs to accomplish.
One I think is very important is we need
to ultimately ensure this technology
benefits people.
And you think about questions like like
it is very clear that institutions,
jobs, just life paths that people
thought would be stable,
those assumptions may not hold anymore.
And we need to make sure that we provide
support, that we're all there to support
each other
as this technology rolls out. And so,
what does that mean from a regulatory
perspective? I think there's a lot of
ideas, whether it's things like everyone
should have access to compute. How do we
ensure that that's true? How do we
ensure that as this technology starts to
generate more economic value, that it
doesn't accrue to just one place, right?
This should be something that actually
everyone is benefiting from. This
technology shouldn't just abstractly
benefit the economy, it's very clearly
going to do. It should directly be
something that people feel in their
daily lives, that they themselves, their
life is better because this technology
exists, because they're using it,
because they're able to accomplish more.
And I think that the
ways in which
I see this playing out, it's very
important to ground it in what are we
really seeing. Like a good example is
the number of people whose who say that
their life, or their life was saved, or
the life of a loved one was saved
through the use of ChatGPT.
And you realize that that's something
that should be supported and protected.
And so, a good example of how you can do
that through regulation is thinking
about privacy and privilege. You talk to
a doctor, you talk to a lawyer, those
are privileged conversations, right? You
feel comfortable sharing them. There's
certain guardrails on when the health
care provider would have to, you know,
provide that information to law
enforcement or alert someone.
Well defined in the law. We don't have
anything like that for AI right now. But
people are using these tools, and they
should use these tools because they're
so important for giving people access to
information that they wouldn't be able
to get otherwise, and that they should
have the appropriate kind of
understanding and protections there,
too.
And so, I think that there's a lot of
just really leaning into thinking about
how do these models insert into people's
lives? How do we make sure that we can
continue to innovate, while at the same
time, also making sure that the benefits
flow broadly. How do we ensure that
America remains a leader, right? That
you think about robotics, where I think
we are not the leader.
I think that for AI, we have to make
sure that we
continue with this
remarkable position that [clears throat]
we have been able to achieve. And you
think about things like data centers,
that those are something where
there's clearly been a lot of concern
about questions like do they drive up
electricity prices? And we have a
commitment to ensure that they do not.
And I think that each of these things
can be achieved through many different
mechanisms. Sometimes it's through
regulation, sometimes it's through
commitments from the company, and
sometimes it's just through people
understanding the facts. Like a good
example is data centers and water usage.
Like that that's something that people
talk about a lot, but actually our data
centers use incredibly little water,
right? That's actually misinformation
that they use a lot.
>> It's less than a household, isn't it?
>> It's It is, because it's a closed loop.
You basically fill up a giant like, you
know, think of it as like a swimming
pool of water,
and you just circle it around. And so
it's a fixed amount of water that's not
very large, but I think people really
understanding the why. Why are we
building these things? Why is it
worthwhile? How does it benefit me? And
being able to give people that
empowerment,
whether it's helping them feel that they
can be an entrepreneur now, that they
can build a business, that they can
create something.
Like all of that we have to solve for.
We have to make sure that people feel it
in their daily lives.
>> When I told people I was doing this
interview, one of the common reactions
is that they're fearing for their job
and their uncertainty. What would you
tell them?
>> Well, I do think that this technology
it is uncertain exactly how it will play
out. I think it is surprising how it
will play out as well. Like the AIs that
we have right now, the world that we
have right now, is not really something
that was anticipated by science fiction.
It's just different. And some inevitable
conclusions, I think, actually turn out
to not quite look the same way when they
come to pass. So, I believe it's always
easiest to see what you lose.
Right? And the change is coming. There's
no denying that. That is absolutely the
case.
But, it's much harder to see a priori
what you gain.
And as an example, just think about
Uber.
If you describe it to someone in 1950,
you have to think about computers. You
have to think about
mobile phones. You have to think about
GPS. And it's all so that you can get a
car to
appear where you where you are in 3
minutes.
And like that's actually crazy if you
think about that level of technological
investment for that kind of use case.
But, it really happened. And it didn't
just happen for that one use case. It
happened for thousands, for tens of
thousands, for millions of other use
cases.
And so, I think that
my view of AI is it is about
empowerment. It is about human agency.
And that that does mean that some of
these institutions, jobs, these kinds of
things that there will be
things that we thought we could rely on
that turn out not to be as stable as we
thought. And so, it will affect people.
But, the question to lean into is
what do you gain and how do you
benefit from it? So, now you can be a
builder. You can create anything
anything you can imagine
can become real.
Well, what do you imagine? How do you
build that skill? Really leaning into
this technology. Like one thing that I
have observed is across multiple
generations of this technology, the
people who seem to be getting the most
benefit out of it are the people who did
it for the previous one. Right? So, the
more that you build the skill
and at the core of it is agency, is
having a vision, is having ideas.
Because now the barrier to entry to
trying them out is lower than ever
before.
So, I think there will be new
opportunity created. I think that the
world does need to think about how do we
support everyone through this moment of
uncertainty, through whatever
transitions will come. Because the
economy will be
a compute power economy. It will be
different, but I think that there will
be a place for everyone to contribute.
>> Where should young people be investing
today? If you're in high school or
university or just trying to start out
in a job, what skills do you think will
be more valuable in the future?
>> Well, I really think leaning into this
technology is going to be
a critical skill. Just really
understanding how do you get the most
out of AI? Because we're all going to be
heading to a world where we're managers
of agents, and soon maybe the CEO of an
autonomous AI corporation. Or just
imagine if you had the workforce of
you know, a 100,000 person company
all at your disposal, operating on your
behalf.
>> 24/7.
>> 24/7, right? As long as you've got the
tokens, the compute to power it, which
again I think everyone needs access to
compute. That's like so critical for the
world to figure out and get right.
Because then at that point
you can point that at any problem.
And
the number of problems that humanity
could want to solve are boundless.
And so I think that the more
the people do lean into this technology,
figure out how to take advantage of
what's coming, how to combine these
technologies in new ways, how to
interact with our agents to really
manage them, to think about when what is
it that I want, what is it that is my
sense of self, what is my purpose, what
do I want to see in the world,
it is going to be easier than ever to
accomplish that.
And I think that that world, the what we
gain, I think is going to be almost
unimaginable in its upside.
>> That's the most positive sort of view of
the future. What's the most negative one
you can imagine?
>> One thing that's very interesting about
how technology has played out to date is
that it's really
been about contorting ourselves to the
machine.
Right? You think about
how many people work where you have this
box and you're typing away at it and
you're getting your carpal tunnel and
your shoulders are hunched and all of
those things that were not natural,
right? That's not really what we're
designed for.
And
we're going to be moving to this world
where it's not just that you're
doing work with your computer, so your
computer actually does work for you.
And
that is something that presents
opportunities. I think it presents
risks. I think we need to figure out how
to mitigate those. Like one core thing
at the end of the day is that
if you have machines that help people
actualize their goals, right? That's out
there doing what you want.
Sometimes people have conflicting goals.
How do you resolve that? How do you
decide what the bounds are on what an AI
will help you with and what they won't?
Really trying to figure out how does
this slot into society? How do you make
sure that the benefits don't just go to
one corporation, one set of people, but
that actually do lift up everyone. We
need to raise the floor
so that
everyone has access to a great life,
this technology, and are able to do
things with it.
And I think it'll correspondingly also
lift the ceiling. And so I think we're
going to be in a world where
everyone is going to have new
opportunities, that there will be more
just
I don't know if the right word is safety
net or just like that there should be
something that that really is able to
make sure that everyone gets brought
along.
But then we're going to be able to
accomplish so much more. And you think
about things like access to medical
care. Like we should be in a world, if
we do our job right, where
everyone gets access, has a doctor in
their pocket that is better than any
team of doctors today. The world's best
doctors, they're there for you. They
care about you. They're actually reading
your charts, that they're thinking 24/7
about how can we actually help with this
condition?
It's disruptive, right? It's It's not
going to come for free in terms of how
this technology will interact with the
world, and we've already seen the
beginning errors of it.
But, I think that what we're going to
see over just even the next 2 years,
I think it will be this force for good,
but we have to also acknowledge all the
ways that it could go wrong or the risks
of it in order to achieve those upsides.
>> We always end every podcast with the
same question, which is what is success
for you?
>> Achieving the open AI mission of
ensuring that artificial general
intelligence benefits all humanity.
>> Thank you very much. This was awesome.
>> This is a great conversation, man.
>> Thank you. I had a great time.