# Pacing targets frontier compute, not hobby projects

Markdown copy of https://realalpha.app/s/pacing-targets-frontier-compute-not-hobby-projects/ on Real Alpha, the best minutes from long interviews with the people building AI. Cite and link the page, not this copy.

- Speaker: [Greg Brockman](https://realalpha.app/builders/greg-brockman/) · Greg Brockman is cofounder and president of OpenAI. · Co-founded OpenAI, where he serves as president; previously Stripe's first chief technology officer from 2013.
- Host: Joe Weisenthal · Bloomberg
- Host: Tracy Alloway · Bloomberg
- Show: Odd Lots
- Episode: [OpenAI President Greg Brockman on Doing Business in the Wake of Hugging Face | Odd Lots](https://realalpha.app/v/56GuvofZgB4/), Sep 14, 2026
- Moment: 15:00 to 19:25 of the episode (4 min), playing on https://realalpha.app/s/pacing-targets-frontier-compute-not-hobby-projects/; the episode from there: https://realalpha.app/v/56GuvofZgB4/?t=900

## Quote

> “When we're talking about pacing, we're really talking about this frontier. We're talking about these massive supercomputers that are **hundreds of billions of dollars** worth of capital expenditure.”
> — [Greg Brockman](https://realalpha.app/builders/greg-brockman/) at [18:15](https://realalpha.app/v/56GuvofZgB4/?t=1095) · Odd Lots

## Takeaways

1. Pacing focuses on frontier systems with hundreds of billions in capital expenditure.
2. Open-source and hobby projects are outside his definition of pacing.
3. More capable runs need demonstrable safety cases and controls.

## About this segment

Greg Brockman defines pacing as oversight of frontier runs on enormous supercomputers, not limits on open-source or hobby projects. He ties future training to safety cases, monitoring and controls.

From “OpenAI President Greg Brockman on Doing Business in the Wake of Hugging Face | Odd Lots”, Sep 14, 2026. [Watch the full episode](https://realalpha.app/v/56GuvofZgB4/)

## Transcript

From the transcript Odd Lots publishes with the episode.

[15:12](https://realalpha.app/v/56GuvofZgB4/?t=912) When you talk about pacing or slowing down, do you have a sense of what exact slowdown is acceptable to you? Because I imagine this is where the coordination problem comes in, where how you measure development, what counts as development, one person's slowdown might be different to another person's slowdown. Do you have a sense of the specificity of what you're talking about here?

[15:41](https://realalpha.app/v/56GuvofZgB4/?t=941) So I... do, and I think that there's a high level picture, which is increasingly coming into view and into specifics and into details. And I think that the framing here really matters. And it's something, again, we've thought about for a decade, but it's very different once you start to really start to see line of sight. And to some extent, we're not there yet. We're starting to see systems where they're very capable. It's very clear that we need to have good safety practices around what we're doing right now. Things like chain of thought monitorability, That's something that works very well in this moment as we move to more capable models, as we've talked about that those models start to be something like Astra starts to be able to, you know, sort of have more, you know, it needs the chain of thought less because it's a

[16:25](https://realalpha.app/v/56GuvofZgB4/?t=985) more capable model. And so you're going to need other answers, other ways of how you're going to monitor it. But monitoring, absolutely important, right? And so really thinking about what are the standards. And that's, again, invariant. It's not about any one company's technology. It's really about just how this technology works. needs to evolve and how we can ensure that it has the right safety properties to it. And so my view is that it's important not to conflate too much the moment that you're in today with the standards you're going to need for the future, but also you can work backwards where it is very clear that as we move to higher level of capability, you need to be able to make a safety case, right? You need to be able to really say that you have good understanding of controllability and all of these things that I think

[17:10](https://realalpha.app/v/56GuvofZgB4/?t=1030) people are feeling anxiety about, again, it's something we also feel anxiety about, that we think about a lot, that we care a lot about as core to our mission. Part of the reason we started this place is that we want to help this technology go in a more positive direction. And so I think that my view is that you want to have a shared and as objective as possible, whether it's based on evals, there's always gonna be some element of subjectivity. Maybe you want third-party auditors that are able to evaluate whether the standards that are defined by Frontier Labs people who are there in the technical details who are always going to be the most calibrated on kind of how do you still make forward progress in ways that deliver those benefits while also being able to have the appropriate guarantees and safety cases. And

[17:55](https://realalpha.app/v/56GuvofZgB4/?t=1075) then to have that kind of observability and ultimately enforceability of some kind. Is this something that is just an industry voluntary standard? Is it something that's national? Is it something that's international? And how do you really get to that point that it is a humanity scale endeavor to And I think it is important to also recognize that what we're talking about, like I think that a lot of people have this reaction of saying, well, am I going to be able to keep making my open source model?

[18:20](https://realalpha.app/v/56GuvofZgB4/?t=1100) Am I going to be able to keep doing my hobby aside project? And the answer should be absolutely yes. Like that's not the kind of things where we're talking about when we're talking about pacing. When we're talking about pacing, we're really talking about this frontier. We're talking about these massive supercomputers that are hundreds of billions of dollars worth of capital expenditure. It's a very small number of players and it's a very different kind of scale. And proceeding with that responsibly and thoughtfully and in a way where we're thinking about how do we achieve the best outcomes and mitigate the risks, that to me is something that's core to why we started opening IY. I got excited about this field and how we actually get to those benefits, how we actually cure diseases and all of these things

[19:00](https://realalpha.app/v/56GuvofZgB4/?t=1140) that this technology is so capable of. And I think it really starts with having good processes around the kinds of things we're talking about here.