# Sam Altman on The Future of AI | Ep. 13

Markdown copy of https://realalpha.app/v/mZUG0pr5hBo/ on Real Alpha, the best minutes from long interviews with the people building AI. Cite and link the page, not this copy.

Sam Altman says AI could reshape science and work, but society may not automatically capture the gains from superintelligence.

- Show: Uncapped
- Hosts: [Jack Altman](https://realalpha.app/people/jack-altman/)
- Guest: [Sam Altman](https://realalpha.app/builders/sam-altman/) is CEO of OpenAI.
- Published: Jun 17, 2025
- Length: 37 min

## The best minutes

- [1:13](https://realalpha.app/v/mZUG0pr5hBo/?t=73) [AI could make scientific discovery its biggest impact](https://realalpha.app/s/ai-could-make-scientific-discovery-its-biggest-impact/) (4 min)
- [8:22](https://realalpha.app/v/mZUG0pr5hBo/?t=502) [Superintelligence may not make society feel different](https://realalpha.app/s/superintelligence-may-not-make-society-feel-different/) (4 min)
- [21:46](https://realalpha.app/v/mZUG0pr5hBo/?t=1306) [Copying a competitor can keep a company behind](https://realalpha.app/s/copying-a-competitor-can-keep-a-company-behind/) (3 min)

## Also worth watching

- [5:33](https://realalpha.app/v/mZUG0pr5hBo/?t=333) [OpenAI's early robot hand failed for mechanical reasons](https://realalpha.app/s/openais-early-robot-hand-failed-for-mechanical-reasons/) (2 min)
- [15:30](https://realalpha.app/v/mZUG0pr5hBo/?t=930) [OpenAI wants its AI to work across every service](https://realalpha.app/s/openai-wants-its-ai-to-work-across-every-service/) (4 min)
- [18:59](https://realalpha.app/v/mZUG0pr5hBo/?t=1139) [AI infrastructure depends on energy abundance](https://realalpha.app/s/ai-infrastructure-depends-on-energy-abundance/) (3 min)

Skip the employment-and-leisure discussion, the social-feed exchange, and the final eight minutes of personal reflections and family banter.

## Full analysis: Sam Altman says science may top AI products in five to 10 years

- Altman says scientific discovery may become AI’s biggest impact over the next five to 10 years.
- The case remains unproven because current evidence is mostly assistance, not autonomous, validated discovery.
- Executives should measure verified research gains, not model capability alone.

Its 6 sections, what it means for you and what to watch are on [the page](https://realalpha.app/v/mZUG0pr5hBo/#analysis), free with an account:

- [1:39](https://realalpha.app/v/mZUG0pr5hBo/?t=99) Altman expects scientific discovery to dwarf product gains
- [3:28](https://realalpha.app/v/mZUG0pr5hBo/?t=208) Reasoning has not yet made research autonomous
- [4:26](https://realalpha.app/v/mZUG0pr5hBo/?t=266) Scientific gains depend on experiments that close the loop
- [12:00](https://realalpha.app/v/mZUG0pr5hBo/?t=720) More capable AI may not produce visible social gains
- [19:25](https://realalpha.app/v/mZUG0pr5hBo/?t=1165) Research capacity depends on a wider supply chain
- [3:09](https://realalpha.app/v/mZUG0pr5hBo/?t=189) Separate research productivity from autonomous discovery

## Summary

Sam Altman is CEO of OpenAI and Jack Altman's brother. He discusses OpenAI's consumer and B2B businesses, its research roots, and a possible future AI companion and device.

Sam Altman argues that AI could make its largest long-term contribution by accelerating science, as reasoning, autonomous work and robotics advance. He says OpenAI expects to build an AI companion across products and devices, and that the AI supply chain, from energy to models, needs to scale. Altman expects many jobs to disappear or change, but thinks people will find new forms of useful work; he is less certain that society will turn superintelligence into broad improvements. He also defends OpenAI's research-first culture against Meta's recruiting push and reflects on workload, attention and fame.

### Minute by minute

- [0:46](https://realalpha.app/v/mZUG0pr5hBo/?t=46) **AI could discover new science.** Altman says AI's biggest impact over the next five to ten years could be discovering new science, beyond new social products, workflows and virtual employees. He says models can now reason at a level comparable to experts in some domains, and scientists report working faster with AI. Current scientific use is mostly as a copilot, though he has heard biologists describe AI making a fundamental leap.
- [5:33](https://realalpha.app/v/mZUG0pr5hBo/?t=333) **Robotics still needs better bodies.** Altman says AI could improve self-driving and that humanoid robots remain a goal, but mechanical engineering is a major challenge. OpenAI once worked on a robotic hand that kept breaking and had a simulator that was slightly inaccurate. He predicts great humanoid robots in five to ten years and says their presence could feel more like the future than AI confined to computers.
- [8:22](https://realalpha.app/v/mZUG0pr5hBo/?t=502) **Superintelligence may not transform society.** Altman says he is more confident than ever that developers know how to build highly capable AI, but worries that superintelligence might not make the world much better. He notes that people have continued much as before despite widespread use of ChatGPT. Altman thinks people will still want humans in stories and relationships, even as more embodied AI may draw stronger attachments.
- [11:10](https://realalpha.app/v/mZUG0pr5hBo/?t=670) **AI's social effects remain uncertain.** Altman says AI may become capable of long, complex work and important discoveries, but he feels uncertain about how society will distribute its benefits. He expects many jobs to disappear or change, while arguing that people will find new ways to be useful and occupy themselves. He says those future activities may look like leisure from today's perspective.
- [15:30](https://realalpha.app/v/mZUG0pr5hBo/?t=930) **OpenAI envisions an AI companion.** Altman describes a future AI companion that knows a user's goals and information and helps across ChatGPT, other services and a possible device. He says current computer form factors were shaped by the absence of AI, and that a new device could make an always-present assistant more useful. He also sees OpenAI's platform integrating across products and services.
- [18:59](https://realalpha.app/v/mZUG0pr5hBo/?t=1139) **AI needs a larger energy supply.** Altman says the world needs to think through the AI supply chain, from electricity to a ChatGPT query, but OpenAI does not need to build every part itself. He favors abundant energy and expects fusion and newer fission technologies to contribute, while also noting solar and storage. He hopes humanity eventually uses far more energy and says space could matter as demand grows.
- [21:46](https://realalpha.app/v/mZUG0pr5hBo/?t=1306) **Altman questions Meta's innovation culture.** Altman says Meta has made very large recruiting offers to OpenAI staff, including signing bonuses around $100 million and annual compensation above that. He says none of OpenAI's best people had accepted so far and argues that recruiting around guaranteed pay rather than the work could weaken culture. He says copying competitors is not a substitute for learning to innovate, and describes OpenAI as a research company that has been building its product organization.
- [27:44](https://realalpha.app/v/mZUG0pr5hBo/?t=1664) **AI could support users' goals.** Jack Altman imagines a social feed that users prompt toward goals such as fitness or learning, instead of one designed to maximize time spent or provoke anger. Sam Altman says technology that helps people do what they want in the long term would be valuable. He describes how daily distractions can pull people away from their intentions.
- [28:58](https://realalpha.app/v/mZUG0pr5hBo/?t=1738) **Altman says OpenAI work is consuming.** Altman says getting older has made him care less about others' opinions, and that OpenAI now has resources to pursue more ambitious projects. He says he has little bandwidth for anything beyond the company and would rather do one thing well. He finds the work satisfying and potentially important, but also overwhelming; he says being tech-famous has benefits, while broader fame makes normal life harder.
- [35:30](https://realalpha.app/v/mZUG0pr5hBo/?t=2130) **Children may take capable AI for granted.** Altman says his child will grow up in a world where computers are smarter than he is and will learn to use them fluently. He also says returning to Y Combinator brings nostalgia, and calls it an earnest, positive and effective part of Silicon Valley.

## Transcript

Uncapped, hosted by Jack Altman, with Sam Altman.

Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.

[0:00](https://realalpha.app/v/mZUG0pr5hBo/?t=0) So far, we've got a consumer business, a B2B business. There's this whole Joni Ives thing, which I'm sure, you know, we can't really talk about. Johnny. Johnny. Oh, we got to start. I got to start over. I can't do that. Leave that in, please. No, no, no. We're going to cut it. All right. Today, I'm here with Sam. Sam, before we start, do you have anything you need to say? You're my literal podcast bro now. Wow. This is great. How did you come to this? It's so sad. You start a company, then you start being a VC, and now I'm here. Are you disappointed? Well, I went the other way. What do you mean?

[0:31](https://realalpha.app/v/mZUG0pr5hBo/?t=31) Well, I was like a VC, then I did a podcast. No, you went the other way. Yeah, it's been good for you. It's great. I'm really proud of you. Okay, so, but I think this is great for you. Thank you. Okay. I think you're an incredible podcaster. It's a very nice sweater, too. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, so I want to start by talking about that. Stop. What are you going to say? Go ahead. I'll say it later when we're done recording. I wanted to start by talking about the future of AI. And I want to talk about the medium term, because the short term is not as interesting to me. The long term, who knows?

[0:57](https://realalpha.app/v/mZUG0pr5hBo/?t=57) But like five, 10 years out is what I'm most interested in talking about. And I kind of want to try to pull out from you your best guess of a bunch of specific things. One of the places I wanted to start was in software. It seems like the most effective use cases so far, which I'm curious if you agree with, but seem to be coding and then chat and code. Yeah, chat and code. I'm curious what's next, like on the next sort of what's the next set of things right after that that will come? Well, I think there will be incredible, like other products, like there will be a crazy new social experiences.

[1:29](https://realalpha.app/v/mZUG0pr5hBo/?t=89) There will be like Google Docs style AI workflows that are just way more productive. You'll start to see like you'll have these like virtual employees.

[1:39](https://realalpha.app/v/mZUG0pr5hBo/?t=99) **Sam Altman:** But the thing that I think will be the most impactful on that five to 10 year time frame is AI will actually discover new science.

[1:45](https://realalpha.app/v/mZUG0pr5hBo/?t=105) And this is a crazy claim to make, but I think it is true. And if it is correct, then over time, I think that will dwarf everything else. Why do you think it'll discover new science? Well, I think we've cracked reasoning in the models. We have a long way to go. I think we know what to do. And, you know, O3 is already like pretty smart. You hear people say like, wow, this is like a good PhD. What does it mean to crack reasoning? The models can now do the kind of reasoning in a particular domain you'd expect a PhD in that field to be able to do. In some sense, we're like, oh, OK, the AIs are like a top competitive programmer in the world now or AIs can get like a top score on the world's hardest math competitions or AIs can like you know do problems that I'd expect an expert PhD on my PhD in my field to do and we're like not that impressed it's crazy but it is sort of a crazy thing yeah you know this reasoning ability of the models over the last year are you surprised yes yeah you thought that it was just going to be like the next token I thought it was going to take a little bit longer to get where we are now the last the last year of progress has been faster than I did the way reasoning happen happen the way

[2:48](https://realalpha.app/v/mZUG0pr5hBo/?t=168) you thought would happen? Like often has happened in the history of OpenAI, sometime, pretty often, the dumbest first approach turns out to work. So I don't think I should be surprised by that anymore. And yet it's like a little surprising each time. So reasoning will lead to science going faster or just new stuff or both? Both. I mean, you already hear scientists who say they're faster with AI. Like we don't have AI maybe anonymously doing science, but if a human scientist is three times as productive using o3 that's still a pretty big deal yeah and then as that keeps going and the ai can like autonomously do some science figure out novel physics is it all that happening as a co-pilot right now yeah there's there's definitely not like you definitely can't go say like hey chat gbt figure out new physics and expect that to work so it is i think it is currently co-pilot like but i've heard like anecdotal reports from biologists where it's like Like, wow, it really did figure out an idea.

[3:42](https://realalpha.app/v/mZUG0pr5hBo/?t=222) I had to develop it a little bit more, but it made like a fundamental leap. Yeah. Will it be easier to get AI to build you a whole business, like build you a whole e-commerce business or like do like a hard piece of science or medium? I wonder about this. If you could like build. a hundred billion dollar particle accelerator yeah and say you'd make the decisions you look at the data you tell us like uh you know what experiments to run and we'll go like find the stuff and do it so you spend a hundred billion dollars doing that or you spend a hundred billion dollars like building a infrastructure to like connect into the economy which of those will it have an easier time doing something remarkable with yeah and i think the physics is a cleaner problem you know i think if you could get like new high energy physics data and then ai the ability to like run experiments i think that's like a cleaner problem um i've heard people say that they expect the first area of science this is like i don't know if this is accurate or not i've heard people say that they expect the first area of science where ai makes autonomous new discoveries to be astrophysics because there's just mountains of data and we don't have phds to

[4:49](https://realalpha.app/v/mZUG0pr5hBo/?t=289) look at it and maybe it's not that hard to figure out new stuff but i don't really know okay so science gets better the coding and chat will just keep getting better does that lead on the business side do you also then have the ability to just can you prompt a whole business like could you just say build me this type of business it looks like this that will happen i don't like there are any people doing that for like small stuff you know you hear these stories of people who like use ai to do market research and like figure out new products and then like email some manufacturer and get some dumb thing made and sell it on Amazon and run ads.

[5:24](https://realalpha.app/v/mZUG0pr5hBo/?t=324) Like there are people that have actually figured out at small scale in the most boring ways possible how to like put a dollar into AI and get the AI to like run a toy business. But it's actually working. Yeah. So that'll climb the gradient. Yeah. What about in the world of like physical stuff? Because like I get that. I mean, it seems to me, you know, very clear that like software is just going this direction. Science, I know less. Take your word on it. what about like moving physical things around behind but i think we'll get there uh for example i think we have some new technology that could just do self-driving for standard cars way better than any current approach has worked and that might not be quite what you meant by like no it is humanoid robots yeah but if our ai techniques can like really go drive a car that's still pretty cool yeah um humanoid robots are the dream obviously i really care about that i think we will get there eventually it's been like a hard mechanical engineering challenge that's more the issue no both things are hard but like even if we have the perfect brain right now i don't know we have the body yet um we we actually very early on opening out we

[6:32](https://realalpha.app/v/mZUG0pr5hBo/?t=392) **Sam Altman:** used to work on this robotic hand and it was hard for all the wrong reasons like the thing just broke all the time the simulator was like a little bit off wow but you know we'll get there yeah i think

[6:42](https://realalpha.app/v/mZUG0pr5hBo/?t=402) five to ten years we'll have great humanoid robots yeah like amazing and they'll just like walk down the street be doing stuff yeah i mean you would think that's where a huge amount of step change unlocks right i think that would be one of the moments that not only is unlocks a bunch of stuff in the world i think that will feel the strangest you get used to a lot of things we get used to like chat gpt doing these things that would have sounded like a miracle five years ago but if you walk down the street and it's like half robots are you going to get used to that one right away i don't know probably you do but it feels like a big difference that's the one that'll feel like there's like a new species taking over us yeah i think that'll feel i'm gonna feel like a new species or that it's taking over but i think it will feel like the future in a way that chat gbt still does not i think also if we can figure out great new computing devices to make that will feel maybe like the future but as amazing as chat gbt is or these new coding agents and they are amazing it's like still stuck in the form factor of the past yeah it's also stuck in it's stuck in the computer yeah yeah there's definitely something about that it only can do stuff at the computer but i don't know like

[7:51](https://realalpha.app/v/mZUG0pr5hBo/?t=471) how much of the economic value in all the world do you think is like cognitive labor that can be done behind a computer like half i was gonna say a quarter but maybe i don't know but Big number. Yeah. Does stuff get much riskier once we have, like, super embodied intelligence? Because those things are gonna be way stronger than us, too. I don't know about way riskier. I think, like, the ability to make a bioweapon or, like, take down a country's whole grid, you can do quite damaging things without physical stuff. It gets riskier in, like, sillier ways. Like, I would be afraid to have a humanoid robot walking around my house that might fall on my baby unless I, like, really, really trusted it.

[8:26](https://realalpha.app/v/mZUG0pr5hBo/?t=506) Yeah. What what like if you're thinking about, you know, we're back here in 10 years having another conversation and we're like, did I do what we thought it would do? What metrics are you expecting? Like, is it that like the GDP growth curve has a kink in it? Is it that like life expectancy is up? Is it like there's less poverty? Is it something completely different? so every year before the last like maybe up until last year i would have said like hey i think this is going to go really far but it still seems like there's a lot that we've got to figure out i feel very confident at this point the most confident i've ever felt that we kind of like know what to do to get to incredible ai systems that are just super super capable if something

[9:10](https://realalpha.app/v/mZUG0pr5hBo/?t=550) **Sam Altman:** goes wrong i would say like somehow it's that we build legitimate super intelligence and it doesn't make the world much better it doesn't change things as much as it sounds like it should

[9:19](https://realalpha.app/v/mZUG0pr5hBo/?t=559) how would that happen seems like a crazy thing to say yeah but like i don't know if i told you in 2020 maybe i did tell you like we're gonna make something like chat gpt and it's gonna be as smart as a phd student in most areas and we're gonna deploy it and you know a significant fraction of the world is gonna use it and kind of use it a lot maybe you would have believed that maybe you wouldn't have but conditioned on that i bet you would say okay if that happens the world looks more way more different than it does right now yeah so it's like we have this crazy thing yeah i mean there's this thing where it's like the turing test you know everybody's just went by yeah nobody really cared and yeah i don't know what explains that or the fact that you can like have this thing do these this amazing amazing stuff for you and you kind of live your life the same way you did two years ago yeah kind of work the same way you did two years ago do you Do you think that's possible that we have like crazy super intelligence that's like 400 IQ and we're still, that's still the case?

[10:15](https://realalpha.app/v/mZUG0pr5hBo/?t=615) I totally think that's possible. Wow. If it's off discovering new science for us, eventually society will figure out how to deal with that. But it may be very slow. Well, what's funny is if it looked like a co-pilot, you'd kind of still credit the PI at the lab who was using this, you know, 400 IQ agent behind it. I think you kind of will, no matter what. Humans are so wired to care about other humans. We need people in the story. You know, we need to talk about like that guy did that thing. Yeah. Or like made this decision or made this mistake or had, you know, just whatever. That's why I was surprised that you don't think if we had like a super accurately embodied robot that we wouldn't start to imprint some of that on that robot.

[10:56](https://realalpha.app/v/mZUG0pr5hBo/?t=656) I think we will find out. I may be wrong. I think we will have more of a relationship than we do now as the thing is more embodied. But I think we are so deeply hardwired to care about other people. And that is going to turn out to be pretty deep in biology. And if you know it's a robot, no matter how human like it seems in other ways, you're not going to care that much. That's that's speculation. So reasoning was like one of the components of intelligence that like sort of got figured out. is there like another thread going around like a topic of like agency or like some concept of like self-directedness like is that a thing the ability to work on a goal over a very long time with a lot of complicated steps along the way i think is maybe what you're going for yeah same thing and that is definitely something we're working on yeah what about the future sort of technical path would you say is now inevitable and what parts would you say you're still not sure which way it'll break i think we will get to extreme Smart and capable models, capable of discovering important new ideas, capable of automating huge amounts of work. But then I feel totally confused about what society looks like if that happens. So I'm like most interested in the capabilities questions. But I feel like maybe at this point, more people should be talking about like, how do we make sure society gets the value out of this? I think those questions have somehow become harder and less clear.

[12:26](https://realalpha.app/v/mZUG0pr5hBo/?t=746) I mean, this is a crazy statement that like we're going to solve the super intelligence, but maybe society still sucks. Yeah. Yeah, I can't tell if. It doesn't feel right to me, but like. I can't tell if sometimes with some of these statements that people don't react because they only kind of believe it. And maybe that's part of why. But I agree. I mean, that's what, you know, the history of a lot of this stuff has been. It like gets said, people don't quite believe it. And then it happens and then people just kind of adjust. So I don't know what to make of all that either. I feel like we've been very right on the technical predictions.

[12:54](https://realalpha.app/v/mZUG0pr5hBo/?t=774) And then I somehow thought society would feel more different if we actually delivered on them than it does so far. But I don't even it's not even obvious that that's a bad thing. Well, one of the more obvious short term impacts will be potentially or you'd think would be like employment. That seems like something that like we don't need like, you know, we don't need to believe crazy leaps to see that there ought to be some impact like this is going to happen in customer support very obviously right now, for example. Yeah. I mean, my take on this is a lot of jobs will go away. A lot of jobs will just change dramatically.

[13:27](https://realalpha.app/v/mZUG0pr5hBo/?t=807) But we have always been really good at figuring out new things to do and ways to occupy ourselves and status games or ways to be useful to each other. And I'm like not a believer that that ever runs out. Yeah. I think now I do think it gets maybe sillier and sillier looking from our current perspective. Yeah. Like podcast, bro, was not a real job, not that long ago. And you figured out how to monetize it and you're doing great. And we're all happy for you. We're so happy. but would would like the subsistence farmer look at this and say this was a job or this is you like playing a game to entertain yourself i think they would subscribe to this podcast i bet they would they would like it but i do think that there is like a big issue here in the short term i think long term who knows i mean one of the things i'm curious about is in general so like going from a time when like everybody was a farmer and like nothing that we're currently doing makes any sense to like now you have all this stuff is it different this time if there's enough resources to go around like at some point are there enough resources to go around and like that's what creates the difference where now people just like don't make new jobs and this so vinod was on the

[14:28](https://realalpha.app/v/mZUG0pr5hBo/?t=868) podcast last week he we're going to release this one first so this won't be out by the time that this is said but his point was that people will just consume a lot more leisure so he kind of took the view of like i think this time like there's just going to be an abundance of resources everybody's gonna have the stuff that they need we're gonna be able to build you know buildings and people can now just like enjoy their lives. Again, I think like the relativistic framing matters here. To us, I bet it will look like those people are just consuming crazy amounts of leisure. I guess this looks like a lot of leisure.

[15:00](https://realalpha.app/v/mZUG0pr5hBo/?t=900) But look at you in that beautiful $2,000 lower piano sweater and doing like hosting this ridiculous podcast. This is a regular sweater. So yeah, I think the relativistic point is really important. But like, you know, to us, our jobs feel incredibly important and stressful and satisfying. and if we're all just making better entertainment for each other in the future, maybe that's kind of what at least one of us is doing right now. That's right. All right, let's change gears. I don't like where this is going. Let's talk about OpenAI. It's a good thing about our brothers. They can really call you out on your bullshit.

[15:33](https://realalpha.app/v/mZUG0pr5hBo/?t=933) It's really helpful. I appreciate it. Let's go to, can we talk about OpenAI? Thank you. So with OpenAI so far, we have like a consumer business. There's obviously a B2B business. There's something in hardware with Johnny Ive. There's a bunch of other potential stuff that looks like it's kind of hanging around. Can you talk about like what's the potential complete apparatus or what's the apparatus at least in some period of time? Yeah, I think what consumers want from us eventually is an AI companion. for lack of a better word, that lives in the ether and that is helping them in all these ways through all these surfaces and all these products. And that gets to know you and your goals and what you want to accomplish and your information. And sometimes you'll like type in it with inside of ChatGPT. Sometimes you'll be using a more like entertainment focused version.

[16:23](https://realalpha.app/v/mZUG0pr5hBo/?t=983) Sometimes you'll be using other services that will have like integrated with our platform. sometimes you'll be using our new device and but what you will have is this thing that will just be helping you get done whatever you want to get done like sometimes it's pushing stuff to you sometimes you're like asking questions sometimes it's just there like observing and getting better for the future but that is eventually what i think it'll feel like is this is my we don't quite have the right word for it my ai companion is the best i can do right now do you think we have like the wrong form factor with all of our stuff right now like computing yes uh wrong is too strong of a word i don't think we have like the optimal thing we we there have basically been two revolutions in computer form factors interfaces whatever you want to call it that i think it really mattered i mean there was like stuff a long time ago but neither you know i were paying attention but in our lifetime there's been uh like this kind of a computer like a keyboard a mouse and a monitor which is pretty awesome and pretty general purpose um and then there's been like touch devices that you carry around and honestly those are the big ones both of those

[17:33](https://realalpha.app/v/mZUG0pr5hBo/?t=1053) had the constraints of not having ai and so there's like things that you had to build or that you could run or not if you have this incredible new technology you can maybe get much closer to the kind of computer that exists it that exists in sci-fi that'll be the same intelligence just in a new form factor which lets you use it differently yeah but the form factor really matters because it's with you all the time that could be one reason it really matters if it's like with you all the time and full of sensors and kind of just understands what's happening and you know let's keep track keeping track of a lot of stuff and also if you trust that like with a very small command you can get something complex to happen and happen correctly like you can just imagine very different kinds of devices what are the other components that you're thinking about right now like so there's like you know there's obviously the way that like chat is getting used by consumers there's the api that you know startups are using all over the

[18:25](https://realalpha.app/v/mZUG0pr5hBo/?t=1105) **Sam Altman:** place there's this like device thing like what are the other like big legs of the stool i think the most important one that the world hasn't really thought about yet is what it means for this to be a platform that everything integrates into and that integrates everywhere so that when you're

[18:41](https://realalpha.app/v/mZUG0pr5hBo/?t=1121) using the other when you're in your car or when you're using some other website or whatever it's just perfect continuity. I think that will matter a lot. There are new kinds of things to build. There are totally new kinds of ways to think about productivity, new kinds of ways to think about social entertainment. But I think the ubiquity will be one of the defining pieces. Given that the intelligence has such strong implications through all of this, there's all these subcomponents to intelligence and layers above the stack. You've even talked about energy. You're obviously super involved in energy. There's a bunch of things even between there and there's hardware and all this other stuff do you feel like it's like important either for like just open ai for the country like how important is this whole stack given all these implications critical i mean i i think the country needs to be thinking of or like the world the country whatever i say needs to be thinking about it from like the electron to the chat gpt query yeah and there's a lot of stuff in between yeah and uh i've started calling that the like ai factory i think we should call it the meta factory because theoretically this is a factory that can

[19:44](https://realalpha.app/v/mZUG0pr5hBo/?t=1184) make more copies of itself but whatever we got to do that whole supply chain we the world have got to do that whole supply chain is it important for open ai to do a lot of it i mean i think vertical integration can be good in some ways but no it is not important for us to do a lot of it if we could be certain whole thing would happen at an F scale. And so there's a lot of places where with partnerships we can drive like huge progress. And that it was like no risk that we lost part of it. Yeah. Yeah. On the energy side, are we going to just consume humongous amounts of energy? Is that going to be basically the only end state here? I mean, I sure hope so. Like,

[20:21](https://realalpha.app/v/mZUG0pr5hBo/?t=1221) **Sam Altman:** I think that the thing that has most correlated with improvements in quality of life over history is increasing abundance of energy.

[20:28](https://realalpha.app/v/mZUG0pr5hBo/?t=1228) I have no reason to believe that's going to stop. Is there any like climate concern with that? Or are you just like, that's all going to get figured out? Well, it's like the least of our worries. I think fusion will happen and new kinds of fission will happen. How confident are you on fusion? Are you totally confident on it? I never say totally, but pretty confident, like quite confident. And that becomes like a huge percentage of energy. But like next gen fission stuff is awesome too. Yeah. uh like i know most of this company called oklo but there's other companies i think doing great work and like that's a huge win yeah um solar and storage seems pretty good but but i hope that eventually humanity is consuming way more energy than we could ever be generating on earth yeah um even if we switch entirely to fusion like at some point if you scaled up earth's current energy use by a factor of 10 or you know 100 or whatever you're just like heating up the earth too much from the waste heat right yeah but we got a big solar system out there doesn't all this stuff that we're talking about mean that like space is both like really important and becomes more likely in general yes like we're going to space i hope so yeah kind of sad if we don't yeah

[21:33](https://realalpha.app/v/mZUG0pr5hBo/?t=1293) it seems like that it it's funny should i make a rocket company i told you that i thought you should make a rocket company there's a bunch of things i think you should i don't know why not what else is on the list i have a whole lot of things on the list for you i would do rocket i would do social i would do as many as you could basically why not i kind of like doing one thing I like my family. I'm pretty busy already. Yeah. Speaking of social, actually, can I ask you about the whole Meta scale? Of course. So what's the situation there? Look, I've heard that Meta thinks of us as their biggest competitor.

[22:04](https://realalpha.app/v/mZUG0pr5hBo/?t=1324) And, you know, I think it is rational for them to keep trying. Their current AI efforts have not worked as well as they've hoped. And I respect, like, being aggressive and continuing to try new things. And again, given that I think this is like rational, I expect that if this one doesn't work out, they'll keep trying new ones after that. I remember once hearing Zuck talk about how, you know, Google in the early days of Facebook, it was rational for them to try social, even though it was like clear to people at Facebook that that was not going to work. And I feel a little bit similar here, but they started making these like giant offers to, you know, a lot of people on our team, you know, like $100 million signing bonuses, more than that comp per year.

[22:46](https://realalpha.app/v/mZUG0pr5hBo/?t=1366) and i'm actually it is crazy i'm really happy that at least so far uh none of our best people have decided to take them up on that i think that people sort of look at the two paths and say all right open eyes got a really good shot a much better shot at actually delivering on super intelligence uh and also may eventually be the more valuable company but i think the strategy of a ton of upfront guaranteed comp and that being the reason you tell someone to join like really the degree to which they're focusing on that and not the work and not the mission. I don't think that's going to set up a great culture. And, you know, I hope that we can be the best place in the world to do this kind of research. I think we built a really special culture for it. And I think that we're set up such that if we succeed to that, and a lot of people on our research team believe we will, or we have a good chance at it, then everybody will do great financially and it's i think it's incentive aligned with like mission first and then economic awards and everything else flying from that so i think that's good there's many things i respect about meta as a company um but i don't think they're a company that's like

[23:50](https://realalpha.app/v/mZUG0pr5hBo/?t=1430) great at innovation and i think the special thing about open ai is we've managed to build a culture that is good at repeatable innovation and i think We understand a lot of things that they don't about what it takes to succeed at that, but I don't know. It's been like, in some sense, I think it's been a clarifying thing for our team. Wish them luck. Yeah, I guess some of what it comes down to probably is to what degree do you think AI work to date is, that copying AI work to date is enough versus how much of the innovation is in front? I don't think it's enough. I think that there's a lot of people in meta will be a new one that are saying, we're just going to try to like copy OpenAI.

[24:32](https://realalpha.app/v/mZUG0pr5hBo/?t=1472) We're going to like, I mean, if you look at how much a lot of these other companies, chat apps look like chat GPT, even copying like the UI mistakes, it's crazy how much the research thing is just trying to get to where we are. And this was like a lesson I learned, a lesson I learned at YC.

[24:47](https://realalpha.app/v/mZUG0pr5hBo/?t=1487) **Sam Altman:** That basically never works. You're always like going to where your competitor was.

[24:53](https://realalpha.app/v/mZUG0pr5hBo/?t=1493) Yeah. And you don't build up a culture of learning what it's like to innovate. And I think it's like much more deeply challenging than people realize once you're in that state. How do you do both? Because like to have like an extremely commercial company and an extremely research oriented company at the same time, there's just like not a lot of examples of it. And I get how you did it before you were really, you know, commercialized, but now you're both and it's still working. We're newer at product. We're newer. Like, I don't, we need to earn that that's working. We're doing okay. We're doing better and better.

[25:28](https://realalpha.app/v/mZUG0pr5hBo/?t=1528) But we're like, a lot of the history of tech companies is you start a well-run tech company, a product company, and then you later bolt on a badly run research org. We're the opposite. We're the only case I know of that's the opposite. We started as a great research company and bolted on this was initially badly run, getting better and better product company. I think eventually we'll be a great product company. And I'm very proud of the work the team has put in there. But like two and a half years ago, we were only a research lab. That's crazy that it was that short ago. And we had to build this whole big company.

[25:59](https://realalpha.app/v/mZUG0pr5hBo/?t=1559) It's amazing, amazing what people have done there. But ChatGPT launched November 30th of 2023. I mean, it's easier to get people together who know how to build a company than who know how to do that kind of research, obviously. It's still hard. Like most companies that have had to build out a product at this kind of scale got much more than two and a half years to do it. Yeah. Why would Meta think of you that competitively? Like, I obviously understand that, like, they probably just see that AI is the whole game. And like, maybe that's just that someone that used to work at Meta said to me that, like, you know, in the rest of the world, people think of ChatGPT as a Google replacement.

[26:35](https://realalpha.app/v/mZUG0pr5hBo/?t=1595) But in Meta, people think of ChatGPT as a like a Facebook replacement. Because people are just spending all their time talking. Because they talk to it in a way that otherwise and they like it more. Time is the scarce resource and attention. It wasn't a question about time. it was that people with this well me of course there is time competition too but that people like doom scrolling on the internet feels like it's making you worse it may feel good in the moment but it's making you feel worse it's making me feel worse a worse version of themselves and i think that we're very proud of some people talk about chat gpt they're like actually like myself better it's like helping me it's like helping me accomplish my goals i feel like it's like this was actually one of the best nicest compliments i ever heard about open ai just someone said it's the only tech company that's ever not felt somewhat adversarial to me you know you have like google trying to like show me worse and worse results and show me ads oh i love google i love all these companies i don't think this is like totally fair you have like meta trying to like hack my brain and get me to keep scrolling you have apple that made this

[27:33](https://realalpha.app/v/mZUG0pr5hBo/?t=1653) phone that i love but it's like you know bombarding me with notifications and like distracting me from everything else and i can't quit and and then you have like chat bt and i feel like it's like kind of just trying to help me with whatever i ask and that's kind of a nice thing is there a way to do social that has like the interpersonal component and this energy a version that i'm curious about although this is i don't know what this would mean uh is like Could you have a feed that didn't have any default, but you could kind of prompt it and say, hey, I'm trying to get fit. Can you show me stuff that is helpful to that? Or I'm trying to learn more about current events. Can you show me stuff from a neutral perspective that is not going to make me angry, but it's just actually going to do it?

[28:23](https://realalpha.app/v/mZUG0pr5hBo/?t=1703) And that would clearly get less minutes spent than the algorithmic feed that's like outrage baiting. But I think that'd be like a very cool version of an aligned AI helping you with the social experience that you actually want long term. I don't know. I feel like every morning, like I wake up as this like recharged person that knows what I really want in life and that I have like such great intentions and I can like commit to stuff for the day. And then like the day comes at me nonstop. And by like 10 p.m., I'm like, oh, I wasn't going to drink tonight, but I'm just going to have one glass of whiskey.

[28:51](https://realalpha.app/v/mZUG0pr5hBo/?t=1731) and I wasn't going to look at like TikTok, but I'm just going to scroll for two minutes. You shouldn't work so hard. I agree with that. But like if I could be my like first thing in the morning self all the time and if I could get technology to like do the things I wanted then, I think I'd be great. Yeah. I lived with you like what? 10 years ago. Yeah. And even then I would say you were and you were like running YC at the time. And at the time you were like, I would say very high agency and you just like did what you wanted and there were no rules. but i think that since then and especially recently it's like there's really like seems like there's like no rules like you know the stargate thing there's like you know bringing fiji into the company there's like johnny i there's like a lot of things honestly and i'm curious if there's any mental update or sort of uh if there's anything that you're able to put your finger on or share that is you know making you function that way i think our grandma used to say oh god no it's it's just like one of the great things about getting old is you stop caring what other people think and i felt that i'm just like you know what and i've also just like you

[29:58](https://realalpha.app/v/mZUG0pr5hBo/?t=1798) know been in the fire line enough but i do think there's something freeing about getting older and caring less about what people think do you still have a set of things that you're like hesitant like is there another level of agency that you could be acting with like do you have ideas that You're like, ah, I would do that, but something's holding me back. So that was the second thing I was going to say is like, as OpenAI gets into a place of like more resources and more potential, we can just do more things. So there's still like a lot of things. Like I would love to go build the Dyson sphere on the solar system and like, you know, make the world's gigantic data center with the entire energy output of the sun.

[30:36](https://realalpha.app/v/mZUG0pr5hBo/?t=1836) But obviously we can't do that right now. So that one has to like wait a couple of decades. But I think we're able to do more. Like we're credibly able to do more things now. How do you pick when you have because that's the other problem is like you've got the like the curse of choice. And so it's like you could you could start some rockets. You could do a social network. You could go nuts on whatever you wanted to. You could go crazy into robotics. How do you like pick when you've got over choice like that? The degree to which I have no extra bandwidth to do anything else right now is like hard to overstate.

[31:10](https://realalpha.app/v/mZUG0pr5hBo/?t=1870) So like, and also I never wanted to run even one company, like let alone a lot of them. Yeah. I mean, I thought I was just going to be an investor. Yeah. I thought you were going to be an investor too. It's a nice life. It's a great life. Yeah. You seem like. Don't I seem happy? I was going to say, you just seem like you have a lot of time for hobbies. I'm glowing. You are glowing. Yeah. You know why? I got gua sha this morning. What's gua sha? Gua sha is like when, you know, it's your lymphatic system. My wife did it. She just like massage your face for me. If you need this podcast, you might get a lot of views.

[31:39](https://realalpha.app/v/mZUG0pr5hBo/?t=1899) I want your face to, you know. And she just sits there like rubbing stuff on your cheeks. One minute, yeah. Wow. Well, you look great. Thanks. Tell her, good job. But I have time to do that. I'm going to text her about my thoughts about that right after this. I don't know. I would like to just do this one thing really well. And I sort of trust that other people make great rocket companies. Would you say on Blend, do you overall really like it? Because it's like more than you bargained for. I mean, I feel very grateful and very like lucky for sure. And I have no doubt that like someday in the future when I'm like retired, I will miss it.

[32:10](https://realalpha.app/v/mZUG0pr5hBo/?t=1930) And like, I'd be like, oh man, I'm kind of bored now. And that was so cool. It's like very important. It feels very important. It feels very satisfying. I feel like crazy grateful to get to do it. And I do like it almost most of the time. But man, has it been like all out and overwhelming and like, yeah, really. I think I've been way more in the in the kind of like line of fire than I ever imagined. Well, it's not really what you set out to do. I mean, like, you know, most of the time somebody starts to like a software company. They expect it to be a software company. I don't think you expect it all.

[32:42](https://realalpha.app/v/mZUG0pr5hBo/?t=1962) It was supposed to be my retirement job. This was I supposed to like run a little research lab. Yeah. And I mean, there was a world where this didn't I mean, there was obviously a lot of worlds where this didn't happen. Yeah. Aside from the liking it and aside from, you know, the number of hours, do you experience it as like heavy and important or like a playful interesting puzzle uh very much both of those at the same time like i feel like it is clearly from like a societal impact perspective or at least the potential uh it is the most important work the most impactful work i'll ever touch i don't know i don't want to get like too much like drinking our own kool-aid but like you know maybe this will be like somewhat historic work uh and and i feel that when i have time to like step back and think about it but in the day-to-day it's kind of like you know it's a smaller stuff and i do find a lot of joy in the smaller stuff like i love the people i work with it's like very fun to get to like do a lot of the pieces some parts are like very stressful and painful but it's the like it is more like uh it feels more like an interesting puzzle than important work you also get to like talk to whoever you want that's cool you get to like think about whatever you want i don't get

[33:54](https://realalpha.app/v/mZUG0pr5hBo/?t=2034) to think about whatever i want i get like problems i feel like i'm like a pre-trained model that just like wakes up in the morning i have like an hour to myself and then i'm just like streamed well stuff and i have to react okay i guess you could um you can put into the model everything's on the table even if you can't control how much time you get to give to it i guess it doesn't feel that way that's i mean it feels like there's some small amount of time before the day really gets going where i've got some agency and can decide some things and then i'm it feels like fairly reactive interesting yeah i guess there's kind of no way around that given the pace of skill i'm trying to find it that's tough yeah i guess you know you'll get you keep hiring execs it gets to a certain place at some point hopefully what about for like your own experience because like what's been interesting to me you know obviously i don't think any differently about you know you on some level other than i think this is very cool but like you've obviously gone from like tech echo chamber famous to just like a regular new york times famous is there any upside or is it all just suck i think there is a lot of upside to being tech famous i think that's like the perfect level

[34:51](https://realalpha.app/v/mZUG0pr5hBo/?t=2091) a little bit like if you're like tech famous you can sort of get a lot of interesting stuff down you can meet kind of anyone you want like it's it's just like that felt you can kind of like encourage people to do stuff there's like a lot of good opportunities that felt good i mean i think i'm not like celebrity famous that would be really miserable but i'm it's enough that i can't like quite have a normal life well it has a different energy to it like you're never going to be as cool as tom cruise or something for sure but i like you know i can still like walk on the streets um i didn't mention this to you but when we were in the exploratorium last weekend in the gift shop.

[35:23](https://realalpha.app/v/mZUG0pr5hBo/?t=2123) Somebody was like, the CEO of ChatGPT is in the building. I was like, that's good. My son still calls ChatGPT Siri, which I think is very funny. We're going to talk about that. Yeah. I talked to Siri this morning. It was very funny when you guys called this weekend and he was like, are you really, are you really, did you really make ChatGPT? I just told him. Yeah. The inventor of Siri right here. Speaking of kids, given the current trajectory you think things are on, does it make you change what you think kids should be learning or what you'll teach your own kids? My kid did learn to roll over yesterday.

[35:52](https://realalpha.app/v/mZUG0pr5hBo/?t=2152) That's pretty good. Yeah. I was very impressed. The head strength. Incredible. Yeah. Top top tier babies. Incredible. Strong. Yeah. I don't. think so like i i mean this stuff it's not going to ever seem weird to him right like he's just going to grow up in a world where of course computers are smarter than he is yeah and he'll figure out how to use them incredibly fluently and do amazing stuff and that will just seem like yeah yeah that's good hopefully that's how it plays when you go back to like yc after this experience are you back and are you like oh this is like you know because obviously you ran yc and So you had that whole chapter of your life.

[36:28](https://realalpha.app/v/mZUG0pr5hBo/?t=2188) When you go back now, are you like, how do you experience it? Is it like, oh, this is like a quaint thing? You know, I love YC. I think like I mean, that in a negative way. I mean, in just sort of like a simple, simpler times kind of way. There's some nostalgia for that. Yeah. Yeah. And it's really like fun to always go back and talk to the batch. But yeah, it hits the nostalgia hard. I just feel like it's like the most pure component of Silicon Valley is YC. I totally strongly agree. You know what I mean? 100%. It's just so happy. it is earnest and positive and energetic and happy and like clearly it works super well yeah all right well this was a blast mom hope you were watching this this was very fun thanks thank you jack