Uncapped #13 | Sam Altman from OpenAI

[00:00] 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. [00:12] 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. Wow. [00:22] 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? [00:29] I went the other way. What do you mean? Well, I was like a VC, then I did a podcast. Oh, 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? [00:59] 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 [01:09] 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... [01:26] like other products, like there will be a crazy new social experiences, there will be like,

[01:31] Google Docs style [01:33] AI workflows that are just way more productive, you'll start to see like, you'll have these like virtual employees. But the thing that I think will be the most impactful on that five to 10 year timeframe is AI will actually discover new science. [01:46] And this is a crazy claim to make, but [01:48] I think it is true. And if it is correct, then [01:52] over time, I think that will dwarf everything else. Why do you think it'll discover new science? [01:57] Well, I think we've cracked... [01:59] Reasoning. [02:00] 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 Ph.D. What does it mean to crack reasoning? [02:09] 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. [02:14] In some sense, we're like, oh, okay, the AIs are like, [02:17] 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. [02:30] 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? [02:37] Yes. [02:38] 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. [02:47] happen the way you thought it would happen? Like often has happened in the history of open AI, 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 autonomously doing science, but if a human scientist is

[03:15] three times as productive using O3. That's still a pretty big deal. Yeah. And then as that keeps going, then 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 definitely not. Like you definitely can't go say like, hey, ChatGVT, figure out, [03:31] new physics and expect that to work. So I think it is currently co-pilot-like. But I've heard anecdotal reports from biologists where it's like, wow, it really did figure out an idea. I had to develop it a little bit more, but it made a fundamental leap. Yeah. Will it be easier... [03:47] to get AI to [03:49] 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... [03:58] Build [03:59] AI. [04:00] A $100 billion particle accelerator. Yeah. [04:03] and say, you'd make the decisions. You look at the data, you tell us like, uh, [04:09] you know, what experiments to run and we'll go like find the stuff and do it. So you spend $100 billion doing that or you spend $100 billion [04:16] $100 billion, like building an infrastructure to like connect into the economy. Which of those will it have an easier time doing something remarkable with? Yeah. [04:24] And [04:25] I think the physics is a cleaner problem. [04:27] You know, I think if you could get like new high energy physics data and AI, the ability to like run experiments, I think that's like a cleaner problem. I've heard people say that. [04:37] They expect the first area of science. This is like, I don't know if this is accurate or not, but 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 enough PhDs to 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 in 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? Yeah. It looks like this.

[05:07] happen. I don't [05:08] There aren't any people doing that for like small stuff. You know, you hear these stories of people who like, [05:14] use AI to do market. [05:17] research [05:18] 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 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. [05:34] Mm-hmm. Toy business. [05:36] But it's actually working. Yeah. So... [05:38] 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 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? [05:52] behind, but I think we'll get there. For example, I think we have some new technology that could [05:59] 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, "Humanoid robots." Yeah. But if our AI techniques can like really go drive a car, [06:12] That's still pretty cool. Yeah. Humanoid robots are... [06:16] the dream, obviously. I really care about that. I think we will get there eventually. It's been like a hard mechanical engineering. [06:22] challenge that's more the issue no both things are hard but like even if we had the perfect brain right now i don't know we have the body yet um we we actually very early on opening i we used to work [06:34] 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 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'd think that's where a huge amount of...

[06:49] step change unlocks right i think that will be one of the moments that not only is [06:55] unlocks a bunch of stuff in the world, I think that will feel [06:59] the strangest. We get used to a lot of things. We get used to like [07:02] ChatGPT 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. [07:18] Yeah, I think that'll feel... I'm going to feel like a new species... [07:21] or that it's taken over. But I think it will feel like the future in a way that ChatGBT 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 [07:33] As amazing as ChatGPT is, [07:36] or these new coding agents. [07:38] And they are amazing. It's like still stuck in the form factor of the past. [07:42] Yeah. [07:43] 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 a computer. But I don't know, like how much of the economic value in all of the world do you think is like cognitive labor that can be done behind a computer? Like half? I was going to say a quarter. I don't know. But some big number. Yeah. [08:01] Does stuff get much riskier once we have like super embodied intelligence? Because those things are going to be way stronger than us, too. [08:07] 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. [08:14] 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. Yeah. What like if you're thinking about...

[08:30] you know, we're back here in 10 years having another conversation and we're like, did AI [08:36] 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, [08:52] 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. [08:58] There's a lot. [08:59] that we've got to figure out. [09:01] I feel very confident at this point, 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. [09:09] If something goes wrong, [09:11] I would say like somehow it's that we build... [09:14] legitimate super intelligence. [09:16] And it doesn't make the world much better. It doesn't change things as much as it sounds like it should. How would that happen? Which seems like a crazy thing to say. Yeah. But like... [09:22] I don't know if I told you in 20... [09:24] 20. Maybe I did tell you, like, we're going to make [09:27] Yeah. [09:28] something like ChatGPT and [09:32] It's going to be as smart as a PhD student in most areas, and we're going to deploy it and, you know, [09:38] a significant fraction of the world is going to use it and kind of use it a lot. [09:42] Maybe you would have believed that, maybe you wouldn't have, but conditioned on that. [09:45] I bet you would say, okay, if that happens, the world looks way more different than it does right now. Yeah. [09:50] 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 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] I totally think that's possible. Wow. [10:17] If it's off discovering new science for us, eventually society will figure out how to [10:23] 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, [10:32] 400 IQ agent behind it. I think you kind of will, no matter what [10:37] What? Humans are so wired to care about other humans. We need people in the story. [10:42] You know, we need to talk about like that guy did that thing 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] 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... [11:04] more embodied, but [11:06] I think we are so deeply hardwired to care about other people and... [11:11] 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. [11:19] 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 is. [11:37] 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.

[11:45] Yeah. What about the future sort of technical path would you say... [11:50] is now inevitable? And what parts would you say you're still [11:54] Not sure which way it'll break. I think we will get to... [11:58] extremely smart [12:01] and capable models. [12:03] capable of discovering [12:05] 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 [12:15] 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. This is a crazy statement that like, we're going to solve the super intelligence, but maybe society still sucks. Yeah. [12:32] 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. [12:39] 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 all of that either. I feel like we've been very right on the technical predictions. [12:55] 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 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.

[13:23] a lot of jobs. [13:24] will go away. A lot of jobs will just change dramatically. [13:27] but [13:28] We have always been really good at figuring out [13:31] 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. [13:44] 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... [13:50] 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. [14:16] 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 so Vinod was on the podcast last week. 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 going to have the stuff that they need. [14:46] buildings and people can now just enjoy their lives. [14:49] Again, I think the relativistic framing matters here. [14:52] Two...

[14:54] Us. [14:55] I bet it will look like those people are just consuming crazy amounts of leisure. I guess this looks like a lot of leisure. But look at you in that beautiful $2,000 lower piano sweater and doing like hosting this. This is a regular sweater. [15:06] 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... [15:17] if we're all just making better entertainment for each other in the future, maybe that's kind of what [15:22] At least one of us is doing right now. That's right. [15:25] 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 a brother is they can really call you out on your bullshit. It's really helpful. I appreciate it. Let's go to, can we talk about OpenAI? Yes. 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... [15:47] 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? [15:54] Yeah, I think what consumers want from us eventually is an AI companion, for lack of a better word, that lives... [16:02] 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 [16:11] goals and what you want to accomplish and your information [16:14] And sometimes you'll like type... [16:17] in it with inside of ChatGPT. Sometimes you'll be using a more like entertainment focused version. Sometimes you'll be using other services that will have like integrated with our platform. Sometimes you'll be using our new device.

[16:28] And [16:30] But what you will have is this... [16:32] thing. [16:34] 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... [16:49] 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? [16:56] like computing. [16:57] Yes. Wrong is too strong a word. I don't think we have like the optimal thing. We... [17:03] There have basically been two... [17:06] revolutions [17:08] in [17:09] computer form factors, interfaces, whatever you want to call it. [17:12] I think it really mattered. I mean, there was like stuff a long time ago, but neither you know I were paying attention. But [17:18] in our lifetime, there's been, uh, [17:20] like, [17:21] this kind of a computer, like a keyboard, a mouse and a monitor. [17:23] which is pretty awesome and pretty general purpose. And then there's been like touch devices that you carry around. And honestly, those are the big ones. [17:33] Both of those had the constraints of... [17:35] not having AI. [17:37] And so there's like things that you had [17:40] to build or that you could rely on or not. If you have this incredible new technology, you can maybe get much closer to the kind of computer that [17:48] exists. [17:49] It 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, keep track of a lot of stuff. And also if you trust that with a very small command, you can get something complex to happen and happen correctly.

[18:11] 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 place. There's this like device thing. Like, what are the other like big components? [18:29] legs of the stool. I think the [18:31] most important one that [18:33] The world hasn't [18:35] really thought about yet is what it means for this to be a platform that [18:38] everything integrates into and that integrates everywhere. So that when you're using other [18:42] 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. Like there are totally... [18:52] new kinds of ways to think about productivity, new kinds of ways to think about social entertainment. But I think the ubiquity will be [18:59] one of the defining pieces. [19:01] Given that the intelligence has such strong implications through all of this, there's all these subcomponents to intelligence and like layers above the stack. You know, like you've even talked about like energy. You're obviously super involved in energy. There's like 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... [19:20] just open AI for the country. Like how important is this whole stack given all these implications? [19:26] Critical. I mean, I think the country [19:29] needs to be thinking about, or like the world, the country, whatever you say, needs to be thinking about it from like, [19:34] the electron to the chat GPT query. Yeah. And there's a lot of stuff in between. Yeah. And I started calling that the like AI factory. I think we should call it the meta factory, because theoretically, this is a factory that can make more copies of itself. But whatever, we got to do that whole supply chain.

[19:48] We the world have got to do that whole supply chain. Is it important for OpenAI to do a lot of it? [19:52] 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... [19:59] we could be certain that the whole thing would happen at an off scale. And so there's a lot of places where with partnerships we can drive like huge. And that it was like no risk that we lost part of it. Yeah. [20:09] Yeah. [20:09] 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? [20:16] I mean, [20:18] I sure hope so. [20:19] Like... [20:21] I think that the thing that has most correlated with improvements in quality of life over history is increasing abundance of energy. [20:29] I have no reason to believe that's going to stop. [20:30] Is there any, like, climate concern with that? Or are you just like, that's all going to get figured out? And it's, like, the least of our worries. I think fusion will happen. And... [20:38] new kinds of fishing 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... I think so. [20:49] Um, energy, but like, [20:51] next-gen fishing stuff is awesome too yeah uh like i know most this company called oklo but there's other companies i think doing great work and like [21:00] That's a huge win. [21:02] Solar and storage seems pretty good, but I hope that eventually humanity is consuming way more energy than we could ever be generating on Earth. Yeah. 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 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? Yeah.

[21:28] in general? [21:29] Yes. Like we're going to space. I hope so. Yeah. Kind of sad if we don't. Yeah. [21:34] It seems like that it's funny. Should I make a rocket company? I told you that I thought you should make a rocket company. That's why I asked. 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. [21:51] Speaking of social, actually, can we can I ask you about the whole Meadow Scale? Of course. So what's what's the situation there? [21:59] Look, I've heard that [22:02] Meta thinks of us as their biggest competitor and [22:05] you know, I think it is rational for them to keep trying. Their current AI efforts have [22:09] not worked as well as they've hoped and [22:12] I respect like being aggressive and continuing to try new things. And I 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 [22:25] you know, [22:26] 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 people. [22:38] you know, a lot of people on our team, you know, like $100 million signing bonuses, more than that comp per year. That's crazy. [22:45] And I'm actually, it is crazy. I'm really happy that at least so far, uh, [22:50] 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, OpenAI has got a really good shot, a much better shot at actually delivering on super intelligence 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,

[23:16] I don't think that's going to set up [23:18] a great [23:19] culture. And, you know, I hope that we can be [23:23] the best place in the world to do this kind of research. [23:27] 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 I think it's incentive aligned with mission first and then [23:43] 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. [23:48] but I don't think they're a company that's like [23:51] great at innovation. [23:52] And I think [23:53] The special thing about OpenAI is we've managed to build a culture that is good at repeatable innovation. [23:59] And I think we understand a lot of things that [24:02] they don't about what it takes to [24:03] succeed at that, but [24:07] I don't know, it's been like [24:08] In some sense, I think it's been a clarifying thing for... [24:12] 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 [24:23] 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 open AI. 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. [24:38] 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 at YC. That basically never works. You're always like,

[24:51] going to where your competitor was. Yeah. And you don't build up a culture of [24:55] learning what it's like to innovate. And I think it's like much more [25:00] deeply challenging than [25:02] 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. [25:17] You were really commercialized, but now you're both and it's still working. [25:22] we're newer at product. We're newer. Like, I don't... [25:25] We need to earn that that's working. We're doing okay. We're doing better and better. But we're like, a lot of the history of tech companies is you start a well-run business. [25:33] tech company, a product company, and then you later bolt on a badly run research org. [25:38] 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. [25:52] Two and a half years ago. [25:54] 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] 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. [26:11] Like most companies that have had to build out [26:14] 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 enough of the explanation. I assume it's just that someone that used to...

[26:29] work at Meta said to me that like, [26:31] you know, in the rest of the world. [26:33] People think of ChatGPT as a Google replacement. [26:36] But in meta, people think of Chachvit as a [26:39] like a Facebook replacement. Because people are just spending all their time talking. Because they talk to it [26:43] 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, well, of course, there is time competition too. [26:53] but that people... [26:55] Like, doomscrolling on the internet feels... [26:58] Like it's making you worse. [26:59] It may feel good in the moment. [27:01] but it's making you feel worse. It's making you feel a worse version of themselves. And I think that we're very proud of when people talk about ChatGPT, they're like, [27:07] actually like myself better. [27:09] It's like helping me. It's like helping me accomplish my goals. I feel like it's like [27:12] This was actually one of the best, nicest compliments I ever heard about OpenAI. 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... [27:24] show me worse and worse search results and show me ads. 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. [27:33] You have Apple that made this phone that I love, but it's like... [27:36] you know, bombarding me with notifications and like distracting me from everything else and I can't quit. [27:40] And... [27:41] And then you have like Chachi Bt. And I feel like it's like kind of just trying to help me with whatever I ask. And. [27:47] That's kind of a nice thing. Is there a way to do social work? [27:50] that [27:51] 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, [27:59] is like...

[28:01] Could you have a feed? [28:03] that didn't have any default, [28:05] But you could like kind of prompt it and say like, hey, I'm trying to like, [28:09] "Get fit, can you like show me stuff?" [28:13] that is like helpful to that. [28:15] or I'm trying to like learn more about current events. Can you like show me stuff from a neutral perspective that is not going to make me angry, but it's just like actually going to do it. And that would clearly get less minutes spent than the algorithmic feed that's like outrage baiting. [28:28] But I think there'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, [28:43] commit to stuff for the day and then like the day comes at me non-stop and by like 10 p.m i'm like oh i wasn't gonna drink tonight but i'm just gonna have one glass of whiskey and i wasn't gonna look at like tiktok but i'm just gonna scroll for two minutes you shouldn't work so hard [28:55] 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. [29:03] I think I'd be great. Yeah. I lived with you like... [29:07] What? [29:08] 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. [29:15] 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, [29:28] the Stargate thing, there's like,

[29:31] you know, bringing Fiji into the company. There's like Johnny, there's like a lot of things, honestly. And I'm curious if there's any mental update or sort of 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, no, it's just like one of the great things about getting old is you stop caring what other people think. [29:54] And I felt that. I'm just like, you know what? And I've also just been in the fire line enough. But I do think there's something freeing [30:03] about [30:05] getting older and caring less about what people think. Do you still have a set of things that you're like hesitant on? Like, is there another level of agency that you could be acting with? Like, do you have ideas that you're like, I would do that, but something's holding me back? [30:17] There's a lot of like practice. 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. [30:37] But obviously we can't do that right now. So I'm going to have to like wait. [30:40] 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. [31:00] How do you like pick when you've got over choice like that?

[31:03] The degree to which I have no extra bandwidth to do anything else right now is like hard to overstate. So like... [31:11] And also, I never wanted to run even one company, like let alone a lot of them. Yeah. I thought I was going to be an investor. Yeah, I thought you were going to be an investor, too. Uh. [31:21] It's a nice life. It's a great life, yeah. You seem like... [31:23] 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. It's wonderful. 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 massaged your face for me? She's like, you need this podcast, you know, I get a lot of views. I want your face to... [31:41] 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. [31:54] other people and make great rocket companies. Would you say on Blend your do you overall really like it? [32:00] Because it's like more than you bargained for. [32:02] I mean, I feel very grateful and very lucky, for sure. And I have no doubt that someday in the future when I'm retired, I will miss it and... [32:11] 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... [32:23] Man, has it been like all out and overwhelming and like... [32:27] I think I've been way more in the kind of like line of fire than... [32:33] 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 expected all this. It was supposed to be my retirement job. This was 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.

[32:50] Yeah. [32:51] 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? [33:02] Very much both of those at the same time. Like I feel like it is clearly from like a... [33:07] societal impact perspective, or at least the potential, is the most important work [33:13] 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 [33:18] you know, maybe this will be like [33:20] somewhat historic work. And I... [33:23] feel that when I have time to step back and think about it. [33:26] But, [33:28] In the day-to-day, it's kind of like... [33:30] you know, the 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... [33:41] It's the like [33:43] it is more like, it feels more like [33:46] an interesting puzzle than important work. You also get to like talk to whoever you want. That's cool. [33:52] You get to like think about whatever you want. I don't get 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 stuff and I have to react. I guess you could, 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. [34:09] It doesn't feel that way. That's interesting. 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 it feels like... [34:18] Fairly reactive. Interesting. Yeah.

[34:20] I guess there's kind of no way around that, given the pace of scale. 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. [34:50] I think that's like the perfect level of it. Like if you're like tech famous, you can sort of get a lot of interesting stuff done. You can meet kind of anyone you want. Like it's just like that felt [34:59] 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 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. I didn't mention this to you, but when we were in the Exploratorium last weekend in the gift shop, somebody was like, the CEO of ChatGPT is in the building. I was like, that's good. [35:29] GT 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 ChagPT? 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 [35:47] change what you think kids should be learning or what you'll teach your own kids.

[35:51] My kid did learn to roll over yesterday. That's pretty good. Yeah. I was very impressed. The head strength. Incredible. Yeah. Top tier babies. Incredible. Strong neck. Yeah. I don't think so. Like, I... [36:02] 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. [36:09] And he'll figure out how to use them incredibly fluently and do amazing stuff. And that will just seem like, yeah, yeah. [36:16] That's good. [36:17] Hopefully that's how it plays. When you go back to YC after this experience, are you back and are you like, [36:23] Oh, this is like, you know, because obviously you ran YC. And so you had that whole chapter of your life. 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, all these. No, I love YC. I think like. I don't 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. [36:45] Yeah, it hits the nostalgia hard. I just feel like it's like the most pure... [36:49] component of Silicon Valley is what I see. I totally strongly agree. You know what I mean? 100%. It's just so happy. [36:55] 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, Tim. Thank you, Jack.