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- [00:00]
Theo Von
Think there's like, a big connection there that we don't know about. A lot of people don't know how many open subscriptions they have. That's why if you're like me, you need help. And Rocket Money can help. Rocket Money is a personal finance app that helps you find and cancel your unwanted subscriptions, monitors your spending, and helps lower your bills so you can grow your savings. I. I mean, this thing is really like having a secretary. It does so many things for you. And Rocket Money shows you all your expenses and subscriptions in one place. Yep. If you see a subscription you no longer want, Rocket Money will help you cancel it. Rocket Money's 5 million members have saved a total of 500 million. Wow. In canceled subscriptions, with members saving up to $740 a year when they use all of the app's premium features. Cancel your unwanted subscriptions and reach your financial goals faster with Rocket Money. Go to rocket money.com theo today, that's rocket money.com/t h e o rocket money.com/theo. You know, the summertime has a lot of side hustles. Today's guest is. Well, dudes are straight up tech lord. Let's be honest. He's. He's one of the leaders, the world leaders in the development of AI. He started OpenAI, which is known for having chat GPT. We had a fascinating chat about the pros and cons, the fears and hopes. Everything I could learn about, about artificial intelligence and where we're headed. TBD, baby. Today's guest is Mr. Sam oh Altman. And I'm very thankful for his time.
- [02:06]
Sam Altman
You know, we had a residential architect do this office. We wanted it to feel like someone's like, really comfortable, like country house or something like that.
- [02:12]
Theo Von
Yeah.
- [02:13]
Sam Altman
Not like the big corporate, like, sci fi castle.
- [02:16]
Theo Von
Yeah, that's what I was. I was like a little bit like, oh, is it going to be, you know, will there be a drawbridge? Will we be uploaded into a suite? Like, what will happen to us?
- [02:24]
Sam Altman
You know, we don't want that. We're going for, like, residential.
- [02:26]
Theo Von
Yeah. I was like, how do we even get through the firewall? How many, like, hit points will we need to get through? You know, it got very Dungeons and Dragons in some of my, like, imagination.
- [02:36]
Sam Altman
Sometimes we want people to feel, like, super comfortable and try to get pretty far in that direction.
- [02:41]
Theo Von
It feels like it. Your staff's very sweet, nice people you have. Thanks for hanging out, man.
- [02:47]
Sam Altman
Absolutely. Thanks.
- [02:48]
Theo Von
Really appreciate it. Yeah. I haven't seen you since I fell out of my chair.
- [02:51]
Sam Altman
I saw you chair at the inauguration. That was really, like, quite a way to meet you.
- [02:55]
Theo Von
Yeah. I felt so embarrassed. And you're one of the faces that I looked up and saw and I was like, God. And that was my first moment. Like, I built us a better chair, to be honest with you.
- [03:03]
Sam Altman
And you did nothing. Right. You were just sitting there and it just collapsed.
- [03:06]
Theo Von
Nothing.
- [03:07]
Sam Altman
I remember that.
- [03:08]
Theo Von
And it was just so embarrassing. I was like, of all people, me. And here I am in this place.
- [03:12]
Sam Altman
And I think it was perfect because everybody's got to have something. Mom's story. When people are like, oh, it was the inauguration. Like, everybody's got to have some story to tell.
- [03:19]
Theo Von
Yeah.
- [03:19]
Sam Altman
And that was an incredible story for us all to tell.
- [03:21]
Theo Von
That's a good point. I do remember looking at people for help, though, and oddly, your eyes. I was like, oh, my God, he could help. You did look like a beacon of help in the distance. I tried to help you have a baby. You have a new child.
- [03:36]
Sam Altman
It is. There have been, like, a lot of experiences in life where everyone tells you something's going to be great, and then it's like, okay, the people are right. The consensus is right. It's like, even better than I thought it was going to be. But this has been the strongest example of that ever. Like, I knew it was going to be great, and it's like, way, way better. It's impossible to describe. There's nothing I can say that's not like, very cliche. And it's totally amazing.
- [03:59]
Theo Von
What is like, one of your. And it's a. You have a young boy.
- [04:02]
Sam Altman
Yeah.
- [04:02]
Theo Von
And what's something like that you think is, like, need or like, what's one thing that kind of like, is bringing you joy with it?
- [04:11]
Sam Altman
Watching the speed with which he, like, learns new things or gains new capabilities.
- [04:17]
Theo Von
Yeah.
- [04:17]
Sam Altman
It's just unbelievable. It's like every day it's like, oh, man, he just couldn't do that before. And now he's, like, grabbing stuff and passing it between his hands and getting to, like, watch it day to day is just an amazing rate of change. And then I don't like, again, I realize. It's like, I realized that, like, everything about babies are very finely tuned over a long period of evolution to make us, like, love them and be fascinated by them. And it's like a neurochemical hack. But I love it. It's great. It's so strong. It's so intense.
- [04:47]
Theo Von
So it's really like almost like a coffee for your heart or something kind.
- [04:50]
Sam Altman
Of I don't even know how to find. I've tried to, like, come up with an analogy to tell. Because now I'm, like, telling everybody, you gotta have a lot of kids. It's really important.
- [04:57]
Theo Von
Yeah.
- [04:59]
Sam Altman
And I've been looking for an analogy of what to explain. And then I always just say, like, I don't know how to explain this. It's just. It is the best thing I've ever done by far. I feel a completely changed person. And I was. I was like, thinking the other day.
- [05:12]
Theo Von
Like.
- [05:14]
Sam Altman
There used to be all these other. Like, at this point, all I do is work and hang out with my family. I like. I don't. I don't, like, really get to do a lot of hobbies anymore.
- [05:21]
Theo Von
Right.
- [05:21]
Sam Altman
Busy time at work. I don't get to hang out with my friends that much. And I. And I don't. You know, there were, like, all these things that people tell you, like, oh, you got a baby coming. You got to go, you know, take that spontaneous international trip because you're not gonna be doing that again for a long time. And I was like, oh, that is kind of sad. In practice, you don't do it. That offer. I at least didn't do it that often, and I don't miss it at all. I, like, remember that. That used to be a possibility. Now I can see that's not gonna be a possibility for a long time. And I'm thrilled with the trade.
- [05:47]
Theo Von
You're moved on.
- [05:48]
Sam Altman
I'm so happy.
- [05:49]
Theo Von
How old is your child?
- [05:51]
Sam Altman
Four months.
- [05:51]
Theo Von
Oh, that's a funny. Like, at five or six almost, they start to get, like, fun, and you can, like. They're still, like. They can't go anywhere, you know, but they're, like, intrigued and stuff. They start to, like, smile or process more. I don't know.
- [06:03]
Sam Altman
You guys say it, but, yeah, he's totally, like, turned.
- [06:06]
Theo Von
Yeah.
- [06:06]
Sam Altman
Really aware. Understands things. It's super cool.
- [06:08]
Theo Von
I have a thought sometimes that this will be one of the last, like, maybe 40 years that we conceive children in the body. Did you have any thoughts about that?
- [06:19]
Sam Altman
I've definitely heard a lot of people say that. I haven't thought about it hard myself, but, yeah, I guess it does make sense. Like, I guess that does make sense.
- [06:31]
Theo Von
Like, God, you were in Your mom's butt's crazy.
- [06:33]
Sam Altman
You know, it is crazy.
- [06:34]
Theo Von
You pervert or whatever. Like. Like, I think in the future, people will be. It'll be kind of done in a.
- [06:39]
Sam Altman
In a vat or something.
- [06:40]
Theo Von
Yes, in, like, a nice vat. You can go see it on the weekends or whatever.
- [06:43]
Sam Altman
And like, doesn't that just feel, like off to you? Like, I can totally intellectually, like, understand that that may be the better way to do it.
- [06:50]
Theo Von
Oh, yeah, it feels way off to me. I was trying to. I thought you would like it. You know, I thought. Yeah, I thought.
- [06:55]
Sam Altman
I mean, like.
- [06:56]
Theo Von
Or I thought that would be like a thought. Like, I guess like that for me, that's one of, like my futuristic thoughts.
- [07:01]
Sam Altman
You know, Like, I can totally accept that that will be what everybody does and that it's, you know, easier and we can, like, make it healthier for the child and the mother.
- [07:11]
Theo Von
Yeah.
- [07:11]
Sam Altman
You know, the mother doesn't take the health risk, but. But, man. So intellectually I can say that, and then, like, emotionally it feels like something is off.
- [07:21]
Theo Von
Feels off.
- [07:21]
Sam Altman
Yeah.
- [07:22]
Theo Von
Oh, yeah, yeah. Because then the family, like, on the weekends, the parents would come and, like, tinker on the glass or whatever, or their dad would put like a, you know, like a Go Falcon sticker on the thing or, you know, I'm saying people would like, decorate it all up or write little messages on there.
- [07:38]
Sam Altman
You know, I think there's another, like, another take I have on all of this is that in this world that we're heading to of like, crazy sci fi technology becoming reality, the sort of, like, the deeply human things will become the most precious, sacred, valued things, and they will really care about, like, the human experience more than ever. And maybe it won't go that way. I don't know.
- [07:58]
Theo Von
Yeah. Do you know? And that's some of the stuff we want to talk about. And thanks. Thanks so much, man, for sitting down. Do you think your child will go to college? Do you think, like, what do you kind of think. Think that looks like?
- [08:09]
Sam Altman
Probably not. If I had to guess. Like, I think. Well, I only went to half of college.
- [08:14]
Theo Von
You. You drop.
- [08:15]
Sam Altman
Did you drop out?
- [08:15]
Theo Von
Yeah, dude, you guys all. I freaking dropped out. I didn't get. You dropped out. Wang dropped out, Zuckerberg dropped out.
- [08:24]
Sam Altman
Probably a lot of other people. And you.
- [08:26]
Theo Von
Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Well, hey, we're both here, so.
- [08:29]
Sam Altman
Oh, it worked out fine.
- [08:30]
Theo Von
Yeah, you're right.
- [08:30]
Sam Altman
You know, you're right.
- [08:31]
Theo Von
Never mind. I'm sorry. I'm being self defeating. Yeah. What does that look like when you think about that? Like, yeah, with AI, with so much new information coming online. Right. And so much like, data being collected and, like information being carpooled and maybe which is a term.
- [08:48]
Sam Altman
So you and I never grew up in a world that didn't have computers, right? Like, and our parents were like, oh, this. There weren't computers. And then there were. And it was this big crazy adjustment. It took them a long time to figure it out. But to us, like, computers just always existed. They were just, I mean, maybe they were kind of new, but they were always around. And, and then like, you know, a kid that is like, there was, there was this video on YouTube I saw like maybe 12 years ago, something like that. That 14 years ago, that is really stuck with me. It was like a little baby in a dentist waiting room or something, picking up one of those old glossy magazines and going like this.
- [09:23]
Theo Von
Oh, I remember that.
- [09:24]
Sam Altman
And to that kid, it was just like a broken iPad because that kid had just like grown up in a world where like there were touchscreens everywhere. And my kid will never grow up, will never, ever be smarter than an AI. That will never happen. You know, kid born a few years ago, they had a brief period of time, my kid never will be smarter. But also they'll never, they'll never know a world where like products and services aren't way smarter than them and super capable. They can just do whatever you need. And in that world, I think education is going to feel very different. I already think college is like, maybe not working great for most people, but yeah, I think fast forward 18 years, it's going to look like a very, very different thing.
- [10:06]
Theo Von
Yeah, yeah. Do you think there will. Oh, here's that video right here. This kid.
- [10:10]
Sam Altman
Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right. I was wrong about the dentist. It was. Or maybe there's a few of these.
- [10:14]
Theo Von
He's like, somebody charge this magazine. He's yelling. How would you recommend to a parent right now to prepare their children for like an AI future? Kind of like, are there certain curtails that you would start to put in now? Or there's certain, like, you know, adjustments where you like get them in a certain training or have them start to watch certain models of things online. Like what does that.
- [10:33]
Sam Altman
You know, I actually think the kids will be fine. I'm worried about the parents.
- [10:37]
Theo Von
Ah.
- [10:37]
Sam Altman
If you look at the history of the world here, when there's a new technology, like people that grow up with it, they're always fluent, they always figure out what to do, they always learn the new kind of jobs. But if you're like a 50 year old and you have to like kind of learn to do things in a very different way, that doesn't always work. Yeah. So I think the kids are going to be fine. I mean, I do have worry, like, I do have worries about kids in technology. Like I think this scrolling, the kind of like, you know, short video feed dopamine hit, it feels like it's probably messing with kids brain development a super deep way. So it's not that I have no worries. I have like extremely deep worries about what technology is doing to kids. But in terms of kids ability to like be prepared for the future and use a new technology, they seem really good at that. Always through history.
- [11:20]
Theo Von
That's a good point actually. Yeah, it's like if you just grow up with it, it's just like having. It's just totally normal. It's like having kneecaps or whatever. You're just kind of used to it.
- [11:29]
Sam Altman
You can't imagine the world where it doesn't exist. You just.
- [11:32]
Theo Von
Right, yeah, yeah, that's a good point.
- [11:34]
Sam Altman
I remember when I was in school in like junior high and Google first came out and all the teachers like freaked out and they're like, this is the end of education. If you. Why do you have to memorize history facts in history class if you can just look them up instantly on the Internet, you don't even have to learn to go to the library. And the answer is like, yeah, maybe memorization is less important, but with these new tools you can think better, come up with new ideas, do new stuff. I'm sure the same thing happened with the calculator before and now this is just a new tool that exists in the tool chain.
- [12:06]
Theo Von
And what about say if there is somebody though that's learning history right now, they just started their second year of college. Oh, that Celsius. Yeah, that thing will definitely. You won't be able to blink for a month, homie. That thing. Oh yeah, you'll SNEEZE and release 5.0. Dude, you'll freaking. Are you guys at 4.5 already or 4.5 already?
- [12:22]
Sam Altman
5.0 is. I think it's gonna be great.
- [12:24]
Theo Von
Oh, it'll come out fast. We had that Celsius.
- [12:26]
Sam Altman
I'm just saying maybe the researchers need it, not me, but you know, we'll get them some.
- [12:29]
Theo Von
Yeah, I think it'll get you there, man. So say there's somebody just for example, like does learning history right now they're in their second year of college, they're good, they're taking history. Is that. Are there some subjects in like, like they're going to be a historian. Is that still a viable space of work as AI moves forward, do you think?
- [12:47]
Sam Altman
Honestly, I assume there will be some version of it. That is. I think it's very hard to predict exactly how something evolves. I. Or predict exactly what the jobs of the future are going to be. Like the, you know, not that long ago, it would have been very hard to predict either of our jobs. If you go back a hundred years, the idea of like this CEO of an AI company or a podcaster, like, you know, probably would have been things that didn't seem to be the most obvious evolutions of the things people were doing at the time.
- [13:26]
Theo Von
Yeah. You just seemed almost probably crazy. Even in trying to explain those to someone, you would.
- [13:31]
Sam Altman
And now, in fact, two of the jobs. I heard that the job that young people most want is some version of your job. The job that young people most want is to be, you know, podcast, influencer, YouTube. They want a YouTube channel. Like whatever it is. They like six, seven year olds, they don't know how to describe it, but that's what they want. And a lot of people also want my job. They want to do like a startup or they want to work on AI and these just didn't exist.
- [13:54]
Theo Von
Yeah.
- [13:54]
Sam Altman
So like, the rate with which the new things come along is fast. And also trying to predict what they are. I don't know. The thing I say all the time is no one knows what happens next. It's like, we're going to figure this out. It's this weird emergent thing. Does the current job of a historian exist in the same way? I'll bet not quite. But another thing I believe is that humans are obsessed with other people. We are so deeply wired to care about other people, to care about stories and history. Our own history is extremely interesting to us. So I would say somehow or other we're still going to care about that. There's going to be some kind of job doing that.
- [14:30]
Theo Von
Man, that's cool. I guess I. If when I take that avenue of thought, like, okay, there will still be this historian or somebody, it'll be some evolution of that. Right. That does seem kind of cool to me because there's a level of creativity in there. There's a level of like faith and spontaneity in there that I think is kind of exciting. So, yeah, I guess I hadn't really thought about that. Sometimes I get stuck in this doomsday thing. Like, I just see like, you know, like the history book closes and they're like, we have enough. We have all the history over here. You know, it.
- [14:59]
Sam Altman
You know, people used to say, like, oh, there's no need for more music. We've made perfect music. Like, why does anyone need Anyone to create anymore.
- [15:05]
Theo Von
Yeah.
- [15:06]
Sam Altman
And that's obviously ridiculous.
- [15:07]
Theo Von
Yeah.
- [15:07]
Sam Altman
Or they would say, there's that famous patent office quote. Everything that humans ever possibly need has been invented. There's nothing left to do.
- [15:13]
Theo Von
I have heard that. But here we are.
- [15:15]
Sam Altman
Here we are. And like, someone asked me the other day, like, you know, how long is it until you can make like a. AI AI CEO for OpenAI? And I was like, probably not that long. And they were like, well, aren't you really sad about that? And I was like, no, I think it's awesome. I'm for sure going to figure out something else to do. I'm excited to do that. Like, I think that's great.
- [15:34]
Theo Von
Right. So you could create something that would have your job, but then you could do something else.
- [15:41]
Sam Altman
Totally.
- [15:42]
Theo Von
But then how do you know that you'll still get paid for your job? I guess, like, well, that's kind of a big question.
- [15:47]
Sam Altman
I kind of think that.
- [15:49]
Theo Von
But yeah, I guess the framing that question might be better. Like, say there are jobs that get curtailed by.
- [15:53]
Sam Altman
There will be some.
- [15:54]
Theo Von
Okay.
- [15:54]
Sam Altman
I think it's important to be honest about that. There will be some jobs that totally go away, but mostly I think we. We will rely on the fact that people's desire for more stuff, for better experiences, for, you know, a higher social status or whatever, that seems basically limitless. Human creativity seems basically limitless. And human desire to, like, be useful to each other and to connect with each other and do stuff for each other and focus on other people seems pretty limitless too. So I think throughout all of history, there have been these predictions. Like, you know, we're going to. We're going to, like, all be on the beach and work an hour a day or hour a week or whatever, and we're going to have unlimited wealth.
- [16:35]
Theo Von
And I've never heard that. When I would. I love that.
- [16:38]
Sam Altman
I mean, they used to say this. They used to, like the Industrial Revolution. People were like, oh, you know, we've just figured out how to automate, like, man's lot in life. There's nothing left to do. We're going to have these machines do.
- [16:47]
Theo Von
All the work sense, probably.
- [16:49]
Sam Altman
And you watch these machines doing all this stuff that only people used to physically do. And everybody panicked and said, there's going to be no more jobs. And we figured out new stuff to want. Now here's an interesting thing. If you could go back to that Industrial Revolution time and people before that were, you know, really on the grind, working super hard, trying to, like, kind of have enough food to Survive. Go back to those people. Look at our jobs today. Would those people say we have real jobs? Or would they say you have unbelievable abundance, unbelievable wealth, so much food to eat, incredible luxury, and you guys are just like playing a game to entertain yourselves. Is that a real job or not? And they would probably say where they sit, what you guys do is not a real job. You guys are, you know, you're too rich, you're wasting your time. You're trying to like, yeah, you guys.
- [17:36]
Theo Von
Are a couple of dang zest lords out there freaking playing UNO in the park or whatever. They would not. I don't think my grandfather would be like, you have a job. He would still be like, you need to get a job.
- [17:44]
Sam Altman
Yeah, totally.
- [17:45]
Theo Von
Yeah.
- [17:45]
Sam Altman
And when we look forward another hundred years at what people are doing, they'll probably think they're working very hard. It'll feel very satisfying, very intense to them. They're really like, they'll feel engaged, they'll be making their people happy, they'll be creating value for each other. But if we could look for that hundred years at those guys, do you think we would say they're working? Or like, man, you have like AI doing everything for you. You're just trying to entertain yourselves.
- [18:05]
Theo Von
Yeah, like, oh, you guys have it so easy, right?
- [18:08]
Sam Altman
But I think that's beautiful. I think it's great that those people in the past think we have it so easy. I think it's great that we think those people in the future have it so easy. Like that is the beautiful story of us all contributing to human progress and everybody's lives getting better and better.
- [18:21]
Theo Von
Say we're able to get to that space, right? Like the move, like the movement that happens with AI and with just technology, which will advance quicker, I think, which one thing that I feel like to me it's a fast forward button on technology and on possibility. Because things can be. Information can be quantified so quick. And a lot of like more menial tasks, even though they're not really menial in people's lives, but menial hypothetically, can be done quicker to get a lot of the framework for things done fast. But how will people survive? Like, how do we adjust our structure of finance of like if some people own the companies that have the AI and then a lot of people are just using the AIs and the agents created by AIs to do things for them, how will society, like societal members still be able to financially survive? Will there still be money? What does that, does that make any sense?
- [19:15]
Sam Altman
It totally Makes sense. Okay, sorry, I don't know, neither does anybody else. But I'll tell you my current best guess. Okay, well, I'll say two guesses. One, I think it is possible that we put, you know, GPT 7 or whatever in everybody's chatgpt. Everybody gets it for free and everybody has access to just this like crazy thing such that everybody can be more productive, make way more money. It doesn't actually matter that you don't like own the cluster itself, but everybody gets to use it. And it turns out even getting to use it is enough that people are like getting richer, faster and more distributed than ever before. That could happen. I think that really is possible. There's another version of this where the most important things that are happening are these systems are discovering new cures for diseases, new kinds of energy, new ways to make spaceships, whatever, and most of that value is accruing to the cluster owners, us. Just so that I'm not dodging the question here. And then I think society will very quickly say, okay, we got to have some new economic model where we share that and distribute that to people. I used to be really excited about things like ubi. I still am kind of excited. Like Universal Basic Income where you just give everybody money.
- [20:26]
Theo Von
Yeah, you hear that term a lot. Yeah, Universal Basic Income income, yeah, I heard you and Rogan talk about that too while back.
- [20:31]
Sam Altman
I still am kind of excited about that. But I think people really need agency. Like they really need to feel like they have a voice in governing the future and deciding where things go. And I think if you just like say okay, AI is going to do everything and then everybody gets like a dividend from that, it's not going to feel good. And I don't think it actually would be good for people. So I think we need to find a way where we're not just like, if we're in this world where we're not just distributing money or wealth. I don't just want a check every month. What I would want is an ownership share in whatever the AI creates so that I feel like I'm participating in this thing that's going to compound and get more valuable over time. So I sort of like Universal basic wealth better than Universal basic Income. And I think I don't like basic either. I want like universal extreme wealth for everybody. But, but even then, like, I think what people really want is the agency to kind of co create the future together. And, and in a world where it's like the AI is mostly coming up with the new Scientific inventions. At least we've got to still have humans, like invent the new culture and have that be a very distributed thing.
- [21:45]
Theo Von
Okay, I guess, yeah, I, I see what you're saying, but would that be like an American thing, do you think, like, since they were invented here, or do you think. I'm just wondering, what does that look like?
- [21:55]
Sam Altman
You know, the economic model of it all or the whole thing.
- [21:58]
Theo Von
Yeah. Or like, is there a dividend of the company that sin is divided up between the masses? Sort of.
- [22:05]
Sam Altman
I mean, a crazy idea, but in the spirit of crazy ideas, is that if the world. There's like eight, roughly eight billion people in the world. If the world can generate like 8 quintillion tokens per year, if that's the world. Actually, let's say the world can generate 20 trillion quint. 20 quintillion tokens per year. Tokens of like, each word generated by an AI. Okay, just making up a huge number here.
- [22:28]
Theo Von
Okay.
- [22:29]
Sam Altman
Will say, okay, 12 of those go to, you know, the normal capitalistic system. But eight of those eight quintillion tokens are going to get divided up equally among 8 billion people. So everybody gets 1 trillion tokens. And that's your kind of universal basic wealth globally. And people can sell those tokens. Like, if I don't need mine, I can sell them to you. We could pool ours together for some, like, new art project we want to do. But. But instead of just like getting a check, you're getting. Everybody on Earth is getting like a slice of the world's AI capacity. And then we're letting the, like, massively distributed human ingenuity and creativity and economic engine do its thing. I mean, that's like a crazy idea. Maybe it's a bad one, but that's the kind of thing that I think sounds like someone should think about it more.
- [23:13]
Theo Von
One of the big fears is, like, purpose, right? Like, human purpose, like work gives us purpose. And also I think the idea that we are the ones advancing humanity gives us purpose. Like, we are the. Like, yeah, like we have some control over our own destiny maybe gives us this sense of purpose. And it feels like that we would lose a sense of purpose or that purpose would be adjusted. Like, if AI is to really, you know, continue to advance so quickly, it feels like our sense of purpose would start to really disappear. Do you. Have you had thoughts about that?
- [23:53]
Sam Altman
I worry about this a lot. It's so. I think people have worried about this with every big technological revolution. But I agree that this time it feels different.
- [24:00]
Theo Von
Like, okay, yeah, because if, say, you had an ax and somebody came out.
- [24:03]
Sam Altman
With a saw, you're like, fine.
- [24:04]
Theo Von
You're like, yeah, that's it.
- [24:06]
Sam Altman
Or even if they come out with, like, a robot that cuts the tree down, it still feels fine. But, like, creativity, intelligence, I think, cuts so deeply at the core of whatever we are and how we value ourselves. One example, we can look at this right now. I think one area where AI is having a big impact is on how people write software for a living. And AI is really good at that. It's really changed what it means to be a software developer. I haven't heard any of those software developers say that even though their job is different, that they don't have meaning. They still enjoy it. They're operating at a higher level. And I'm hopeful, at least for a long time, you know, 100 years from now, who knows? But I'm hopeful that that's what it'll feel like with AI is even if we're asking it to solve huge problems for us, even if we ask it to say, like, you know, go discover a cure for cancer, there will still be a lot of things to do in that process that feel valuable to a person. You're still asking it the questions. You're still, like, helping guide it. You're still framing it or whatever it is. You're still talking to the world about it. And I think all of human history suggests that we find a way to put ourselves at the center of the story and feel really good about it. If you kind of think, we used to think that the Earth was the center of the solar system, and then we're like, very human centric view, and then we're like, okay, fine, the sun is the center of the solar system, but the solar system is at least the center of the galaxy. And now, oh, man, there's a lot of galaxies and oh, man, now we're this, like, tiny speck in this, like, very huge universe. And yet we still manage to feel all, like, a lot of main character energy. And so I somehow think even in a world where AI is doing all of this stuff that humans used to do, we are going to find a way in our own telling of the story, to feel like the main characters. And I think in an important sense, we will be. And that's really good. I also, like, you know, probably already today, there could be a very compelling version of two AIs talking like this. And I don't think I would want to watch that. Like, I think I really do feel deeply wired to like, care about the real person behind it. I think that's like deep in the biology, right?
- [26:28]
Theo Von
Yeah, that's the part, I think a lot of times it's like, even though you can get into like these wormholes of like, possibility and these fear holes of possibility or kind of this dystopian ideas that in the end I'm like, I'd rather probably watch something that's real, you know, it's like, because I'm real, you know what I'm saying? Like, I don't want to talk really to a robot. I'd ra. You know. Yeah. I think in the end there's going to be a part of you that wants to continue to just talk, to talk to humans. Do you. What's like one of your fears? Like, what's a fear you have of AI? Like, if you have like a fearful space that it could go like. I know you mentioned it a little bit this morning.
- [27:10]
Sam Altman
I was testing our new model and I got a question. I got emailed a question that I didn't quite understand. And I put it in the model, this GPT5 and it answered it perfectly. And I really kind of sat back in my chair and I was just like, oh man, here it is. Moment. And I got over it quickly. I got busy onto the next thing. But it was like, I mean, it's what kind of we're talking about. I felt like useless relative to the AI in this thing that I felt like I should have been able to do and I couldn't. And it was really hard. But the AI just didn't like that. Yeah, it was a weird feeling.
- [27:48]
Theo Von
Yeah, I think that's. I think that feeling right there, that's the feeling a lot of people kind of have. Like, what's going, you know, when does it happen? What's going to happen? But I think some of it is. It's like, it's hard to conceptualize until you're further along.
- [28:06]
Sam Altman
Totally. I don't think we know quite how that's going to feel. You just have to like, approach it step by step. Another thing I'm afraid of. And we had a, you know, a real problem with this earlier, but it can get much worse is just what this is going to mean for users. Mental health. There's a lot of people that talk to ChatGPT all day long. There are these sort of new AI companions that people talk to like they would a girlfriend or a boyfriend. And we were talking earlier about how it's probably not been good for kids to like grow up like on the dopamine hit of scrolling, you know?
- [28:41]
Theo Von
Yeah, for sure.
- [28:42]
Sam Altman
Or whatever.
- [28:43]
Theo Von
Yeah. Do you think that. How do you keep like AI from having that same effect, like that negative effect that social media really has had?
- [28:51]
Sam Altman
I'm scared of that. I don't. I don't have an answer yet. I don't think we know quite the ways in which it's going to have those negative impacts, but I feel for sure it's going to have some and we'll have to. I hope we can learn to mitigate it quickly.
- [29:06]
Theo Von
Can I. Can they pull up pornography and stuff like that too, or.
- [29:09]
Sam Altman
No, sure.
- [29:10]
Theo Von
Oh, my God. God. I didn't know that. No, it's fine. Yeah, but I just. Yeah, I don't even need to know that I'm going to have that stricken from my own record. Crypto is. It's kind of blowing up again. You know, it's. Some people say it's back. It's not back. It's one of the best things is it hasn't left. It is. It has maintained itself as a viable form of currency. And I'm back in. I'm back invested. And when I need more Bitcoin or Solana or xrp, Moon Pay is always the first app I open. Since Moonpay works with Apple Pay, Venmo, PayPal, bank accounts and credit cards, it's fast and easy to get what I need in a few clicks. And because Moonpay has been around for six years and is used by millions of people, they've also formed pretty cool relationships with other companies in the crypto space. Yep. Moonpay is partnered now with Trust Wallet, one of the most popular self custody wallets in the world. With Trust Wallet, you control your crypto fully, no compromises. And thanks to Moonpay, you can fund your wallet instantly using your favorite payment methods. It's the fastest way to go from cash to crypto, all while keeping full control of your assets. Remember, while Moonpay makes buying crypto straightforward, it's essential to do your own research and understand the risks involved. Crypto trading can be volatile and you could lose your investment. Moonpay is a tool to facilitate your transactions, not a source of financial advice. Trade responsibly. What happens when your health becomes the punchline? That's my question. It feels like that's where we're at. From seed oils to stress, toxins, pollutants, the modern world is screwing with our health at the cellular level, leading to exhaustion, brain fog, digestive issues and more. But here's the thing you don't have to settle for feeling like garbage. 24.7 armor Colostrum is nature's original health hack. Packed with over 400 bioactive nutrients that fortify gut integrity, strengthen immunity, revitalize hair growth, fuel stamina, elevate focus, and help you function like a human again. I love using it in my smoothies at home. I'll make me a little smoothie. Bang dong, put in some blueberries, spinach, banana. Hit it with a little packet of armor. A Colostrum. We've worked out a special offer for our audience here. Receive 15% off your first order, go to tryarmora.com theo or enter T H E O to get 15% off your first order. That's T R Y A R m r a.com Theo what legal system do does AI have to work by? Is there like a legal. Like, are there like we have laws like in the world, right? Like in the human world is in. Does AI have to work by any, like, legal laws? You know.
- [32:18]
Sam Altman
Yeah. So I think we will certainly need a legal or a policy framework for AI. One example that we've been thinking about a lot, this is like a. Maybe not quite what you're asking. This is like a very human centric version of that question. People talk about the most personal shit in their lives to ChatGPT. It's, you know, people use it, young people especially, like use it as a therapist, a life coach having these relationship problems. What should I do? And right now, if you talk to a therapist or a lawyer or a doctor about those problems, there's like legal privilege for it. You know, like it's, there's doctor patient confidentiality, there's legal confidentiality, whatever. And we don't, we haven't figured that out yet for when you talk to ChatGPT. So if you go talk to ChatGPT about your most sensitive stuff and then there's like a lawsuit or whatever, like we could be required to produce that. And I think that's very screwed up. I think we should have like the same concept of privacy for your conversations with AI that we do with a therapist or whatever. And no one had to think about that even a year ago. And now I think it's this huge issue of like, how are we going to treat the laws around this?
- [33:25]
Theo Von
Well, do you think there should be like, kind of like a. Like a slowing things down before we move there kind of, because. Yeah, that is kind of wild. It's one of the reasons I get scared sometimes to use certain AI stuff because I don't know how much personal information I want to put in because I don't know who's going to have it.
- [33:40]
Sam Altman
I think we need this point addressed with some urgency. And you know, the policymakers I've talked to about it, like broadly agree. It's just, it's new and we got to do it quickly. Do you talk to ChatGPT?
- [33:52]
Theo Von
I don't talk to it that much. One of the main, one of my.
- [33:54]
Sam Altman
Because of this.
- [33:54]
Theo Von
I think it is, it's because it's.
- [33:55]
Sam Altman
Like, I think it makes sense to.
- [33:58]
Theo Von
Not talk to Jackie.
- [33:59]
Sam Altman
No, no, no. To like really want the privacy clarity before you use it a lot.
- [34:03]
Theo Von
Yeah.
- [34:03]
Sam Altman
Like the legal clarity.
- [34:05]
Theo Von
Yeah. It's scary. And it's like, well, how long does it take lawmakers to come up with that? And then it feels like it's moving so fast that it's like it doesn't even matter. That sometimes it's like it doesn't even really matter. It's like, are we even waiting for the laws to be put around this or, or what's going on? Does it feel like it's moving too fast for you?
- [34:21]
Sam Altman
Sometimes the last few months have felt very fast. It feels faster and faster. But the last few months have felt very fast.
- [34:28]
Theo Von
Yeah. I was watching this guy, Yoshua Bengio, Yashua Bengio, Yahshua Bengio. And he's kind of like, some people call him the father of AI. He may be self proclaimed, I'm not really sure, but he certainly seemed to be kind of like a lifeguard for AI. Like thinking about like, well, you know, how do we keep the pool safe, you know, how much water should be in it, you know, the chlorine, what, you know, how many lifeguards you need on duty, that type of thing, hypothetically. And he said, and he was saying that some AIs, they, they have like deception techniques inside of them. Like that there were AIs that would rather give you an answer that was possibly pleasing to the user than to give them the factual answer. And then he was also saying that there were AIs that were developing some of their own languages to communicate with each other, which would be languages that we don't even know. What is that? How do you guys curtail that when those types of things come up? What does that even kind of feel like to you guys? Are these just problems that happen in new spaces and you figure it out as you go?
- [35:36]
Sam Altman
You know, there are these moments in the history of science where you have a group of scientists look at their creation and just say, you know, what, what if, what have we done? What, Maybe it's great, maybe it's bad, but what have we done? Like, maybe the most iconic example is thinking about the scientists working on the Manhattan Project in 1945, sitting there watching the Trinity test and just, you know, this thing that, yeah, it was a completely new, not, not human scale kind of power, and everyone knew it was going to reshape the world. And I do think people working on AI have that feeling in a very deep way. You know, we just don't know. Like, we think it's going to be great. There's clearly real risks. It kind of feels like you should be able to say something more than that. But in truth, I think all we know right now is that we have discovered, invented, whatever you want to call it, something extraordinary that is going to reshape the course of human history.
- [36:36]
Theo Von
Dear God, man. But if you don't know, we don't know.
- [36:40]
Sam Altman
Well, of course, I mean, I think no one can predict the future. Like, human society is very complex. This is an amazing new technology. Maybe a less dramatic example than the atomic bomb is when they discovered the transistor a few years later.
- [36:55]
Theo Von
The transistor radio, the little transistor part.
- [36:58]
Sam Altman
That made computers and radios and everything else. But we discovered this completely new thing that enabled the whole computer revolution and is in this microphone and those computers and our iPhones. And like, the world would be so different if people had not discovered that. And then over the decades, figured out how to make them smaller and more efficient. And now we don't think about it because the transistors are just everything. We have all this modern technology from that one scientific discovery. And I do think that's what AI is going to be like. We had this one crazy scientific discovery that led to these language models we all use now. And that is gonna change the course of society in all kinds of ways. And of course, we don't know what they all are.
- [37:38]
Theo Von
Damn. I was hoping you knew by the end of that sentence, or I was hoping you would, you know, like, that's what we're. Cause we don't know. You know, like, that's, I think, the tough thing.
- [37:49]
Sam Altman
There's no time in human history at the beginning of a century where the people ever knew what the end of the century was gonna be like. Yeah, so maybe it's. I do think it was faster and faster each century. It's certainly like in 1900, you couldn't have predicted what 2000 was going to be like. I think in 2000, you could even less predict what 2100 was going to look like. But that's kind of why it's exciting, and that's kind of why people get to figure out and unfold the story as we go.
- [38:14]
Theo Von
It's kind of bizarre because there's a part of me that's like, this guy's out of his mind. This guy is a wild wizard. You know, there's a couple different things, but then there's also this part of me that's like, this guy is this hopeful guy who's, like, involved in this crazy space, and he kind of has this whimsical energy about the future, which is, in a crazy way, a nice energy to have about the future generally, is that something could happen or that things are possible. So it just. Yeah, it's all kind of like. I don't know. It's fascinating. It's definitely fascinating to me, Sam, to kind of pivot a little bit. There's. It feels like there's a race right now in AI, right? Would you say that there's a race between companies in AI?
- [39:01]
Sam Altman
It certainly feels that way, yeah.
- [39:03]
Theo Von
And it almost feels like you guys are the new Formula one drivers, or you guys are like the new. Like, it's like Mario Andretti, or you guys are the new, like, Bubba Watts and all the. You know, it's almost like these are the new race cars that everybody's kind of watching position themselves. What is the race for? Because you hear about AI and then you hear about AGI and then you hear about super intelligence. What is. What is this race that's going on? How real is it, and what is the race for?
- [39:37]
Sam Altman
When I was a kid, the race was like the megahertz race, and then it became the gigahertz race. Everybody wanted a computer with a faster processor, and, oh, yeah, you know, intel would come out with this one, and then AMD would come out with this one, and every. Like, it turned out that those gigahertz measurements eventually were not even that helpful. Like, you could have one that had a lower number, and it was. In practice, it was faster. And eventually, I think it was Apple that realized they should just stop talking about the clock speed of their computers. And you probably don't even know what the processor speed of your iPhone is today.
- [40:08]
Theo Von
Yeah, it's true. Yeah, that was a big thing, and it kind of disappeared.
- [40:11]
Sam Altman
And I think the same thing has been happening in AI, where everybody was racing on these benchmarks. I score this on this benchmark, and this on that one. And now people are realizing that, okay, the benchmarks are kind of saturated. We went through the equivalent of our megahertz race with our benchmark race and now people kind of don't care about that as much. And now it's like who's using the model, who's getting the value out of it, things like that. But, but I do think people still feel like we're heading towards some milestone. What the milestone is they disagree on. But maybe it's a system that's capable of doing its own AI research and its own sort of self improvement. Maybe it's a system that is like smarter than all of humans put together, but they feel like there is some finish line to cross. I actually don't quite feel like this, but I think a lot of people in the industry that there's some finish line that we're going to cross. Maybe it's this like self improvement moment. Maybe you call that super intelligence. And I think there is a sort of, there's like a race to get somewhere but people don't agree on where it's to or something.
- [41:20]
Theo Von
What are you racing towards?
- [41:21]
Sam Altman
You feel like it's a great question. I don't have like a finish line in mind. There's nothing I could say to that. I don't think I can articulate anything where I would say like this is mission complete. But if I had to give a self referential answer there. The moment where we would rather give our research cluster, our GPUs that we run all of our AI experiments on. The moment where we would rather give that to an AI researcher rather than our brilliant team of human researchers, that does at least seem like some kind of very different new era.
- [42:00]
Theo Von
Yeah. And at that point who's even we? I feel like it's just you kind of like wheeling the stuff across the hall and you know, like who's gonna, you know, I'm saying like, or you know what I'm saying. It starts to get this idea like if we keep, if ever, if things were to keep leaving the, the people and go to the computer, you just shoveling coal into the AI hypothetically, you.
- [42:19]
Sam Altman
Know, again, I assume that what will happen like with every other kind of technology is we'll realize like we, there's this one thing that the tool's way better than us at. Now we got to go solve some other problems. So let's put our brain power there. I, I somehow don't think it'll ever feel like we all just get to like push a button and go on vacation.
- [42:36]
Theo Von
Got it.
- [42:39]
Sam Altman
Like we will. I think as one version of this is as, as capabilities go up because as we get better tools, the expectation goes way up too. And so we've got to like, yes, we get much better tools but we have to do way more to remain competitive.
- [42:54]
Theo Von
Well, I think there's this hopefully to say if you come up with all.
- [42:57]
Sam Altman
These, maybe not like maybe, maybe the AI is just better than us. Absolutely everything. We just sit there being like, all right, that was cool.
- [43:03]
Theo Von
Yeah. Because at a certain point if something has all the information, right. If something has all the information, it can think and, and, and ponder and pontificate and serve multi options of answers, don't we? Then working for that thing, like that's what I start to wonder like if it's the smartest thing in the room.
- [43:21]
Sam Altman
GPT5 is the smartest thing. GPT5 is smarter than us in almost every way, you know, and yet here we are. So there's like, there's something about the way the world works, there's something about this doesn't mean it's true forever, but there's something about what humans can do today that is so different. There's also something about humans care about today that is so different than AI that I don't think the simplistic thing quite works. Now again, by the time it's a million times smarter than us, who knows.
- [43:50]
Theo Von
Is part of you want to kind of get there? Like how do we get where? Like I open the door and I say excuse me sir. And it's just my computer in there, you know what I'm saying?
- [44:00]
Sam Altman
You know, when I was a kid I sort of thought about these technological revolutions that happened one at a time. There was the agriculture revolution a long time ago and that freed us up to do these other things. And then there was the like there was the Age of Enlightenment and there was the Industrial revolution and there was the computer revolution and all these things happened and I thought of them as like these distinct things. And now I view it as just this one long compounding exponential where all of these things come together. Each piece of technology is built continuously on, overlapping on the one that comes before. And we're able to just do more and more. And so in some sense AI is this big, special, unique, different thing. And in some other sense it is just part of this long arc of human progress. We talked about the transistor earlier, but like that was way more important in some sense to AI happening than the work we do now. And all this stuff has to, like, compound. Compound. You got to build the Internet. You got to get all this data, you got to do all these things. And. And I want that exponential to keep going. There'll be things way after AI we'll invent all sorts of new things. We'll go colonize space. We'll go, you know, build neural interfaces. Who knows what else we'll do? But I think at some point, AI fades into that arc of history. We don't even think about it. It's like transistors, which we don't even think about today. It's just another layer in the scaffolding that humans collectively have built up bit by bit over time. And where you sit in our day, you get to open that door. You have this, like, computer that only has one interface. You just. It says, what do you want? You say, whatever you want. It happens. And you figure out amazing new things to build for the next generation and the next and the next. And we just keep going.
- [45:45]
Theo Von
Yeah. I think the. The part that I think gets spooky is I can't build any. I can build some stuff, but I can't build, like, any technological stuff. So then I'm like, dang, dude. Well, I'm not going to. What am I going to build over there?
- [45:59]
Sam Altman
So right now I can write software. Maybe you can't. And I have a little advantage if I want to go build some technological thing very soon. You can make any piece of software you want because you just ask an AI in English, you say, I got an idea for an app, make me this thing. And the whole thing just happens. So that's a win for you. Maybe it's a little bit of a loss for me. I think it's kind of cool for the whole world, but this is going to be a technology that anybody can use. You can just. With natural language, you can say, this is what I want. It goes off and writes the code for you, debugs it for you, deploys.
- [46:30]
Theo Von
It for you, and then you can say, how do I use what I just created?
- [46:32]
Sam Altman
Yeah, but if you have a great idea, AI will just make it happen for you. And this is a new thing. Like this is this. I think this will make technology the most accessible it ever has been.
- [46:41]
Theo Von
Got it. Okay, then that seems a little bit different. I think there's this idea in my head that I'm going to have to figure out all this coding. I'm going to figure out all of this, different ways to do things, to even have a possibility of use of myself in the Future?
- [46:55]
Sam Altman
No, I think this is. Without talking too much about the future and what we're going to launch. The fact that you will be able to have an entire piece of software created just by explaining your idea is going to be incredible for humans, getting great new stuff. Because right now I think there's a lot more good ideas than people who know how to make them. And if AI can do that for us, we're really good at coming up with creative ideas.
- [47:20]
Theo Von
Yeah, I mean, that's one of the things that people like to do. Do you think right now, if. If humans, regular, average humans, most humans could vote to keep AI going or to stop AI, what do you think that they.
- [47:32]
Sam Altman
That's a great question.
- [47:33]
Theo Von
What do you think that they would vote?
- [47:35]
Sam Altman
This is like, totally kind of. I don't have any data for this. I would bet most people who use ChatGPT, which is a lot of people know, they would say, like, keep it going. And most people who don't would say, it's scary. Stop it. What do you think?
- [47:48]
Theo Von
Yeah, I feel like most people would say, stop it. I think, or pause it. Take the wheels off of it for a month, that kind of thing. Siphon the gas out of the tank, you know, like that kind of thing. Put sugar in it. I think there would like that kind of thing, you know.
- [48:04]
Sam Altman
What are you most afraid of with it? Or is it just that we're not going to have purpose and we don't know how it's all going to go?
- [48:08]
Theo Von
Yeah, I mean, those are some of the huge parts, but I think, like, there's, like, probably that. I think that in the end, I think there's a general feeling of, like, well, if all the trucking jobs disappear, you know, if those become automated and. And like, yeah, if everything becomes a robo tax, like, you know, will that feel, you know, where will those people go for jobs? Will everybody just be dancing on TikTok, trying to get people to tip them for trends and stuff? You know, like, there's part of. I had this dream years ago that it all ends with everybody's driving an Uber and literally holding each other at gunpoint to be each other's passengers, Right? Like, get in my car. Because that's how bad, like, somebody's like, I need the fair more than you do. You know, my whole family's in the back seat. Sit shotgun. We'll get you to where, you know, like, people are literally holding each other at gunpoint to subscribe to their only fans and stuff. Like, it's just that dystopian or whatever. So I guess part of that, but then there's a deeper part where it's like, yeah, what comes out of us? If it feels like a lot of the regular stuff that gives us purpose that we know right now gives us purpose, is there a new evolution of our purpose? Is there like a blooming inside of us? Is it this utopian place that you almost think of as like a heaven idea where, you know, people are fed and have enough, you know, can take, are provided for, can take care of themselves? I guess that's that, that's it or what? Because purpose gives people work. Work gives people so much of their purpose. And so for to lose those things, what is it? What happens? You know, And I know I kind of keep asking that over and over again. You don't really have the answers. And that's. It's okay. Of course. How could you? We're not in the future.
- [49:53]
Sam Altman
I mean, I think people really do love to be useful to each other and people love to express their creativity as part of that. And as the long term trend of society getting richer has continued, more people I think are able to do get closer to sort of expressing themselves in the best way that they can. Maybe like as recently as five or six hundred years ago, not very many people got to be artists. The world wasn't that rich. There were a limited number of patrons that could pay you to create art, but there were more than zero. And before that there were almost none. And then you got this beautiful Italian Renaissance and all of this amazing art because there was excess capital in the world. And now a lot more people can be artists or a lot more people can start startups, which is another for me, that's my expression of creativity. Or more people can create content.
- [50:54]
Theo Von
Yeah.
- [50:55]
Sam Altman
And, and this idea that people can find whatever way they can to express themselves, their talent, their vision for kind of collective love of other people and a care for putting their brick in society's progress. I think that can go really far. Now what art in the future looks like now that AI can make art or help make art, I don't know, it'll probably be kind of different. What startups will look like in the future when people can kind of just say whatever they want to their AI and it can make the software for them. Right. Then it will kind of be different. But I think it's such a bad bet to assume that either human creativity or human fulfillment from being useful to other people ends. I think we're just, we stay on this exponential and like, each year, each decade, our collective standard of living goes way up. The whole world gets way richer. We all get more. We all expect more. And even over, like, the course. I was thinking recently, like, food is so much better than it is when I was a kid. Like, the world has just figured out how to make food better. Like, we, you know, know how to. We figured out organic vegetables or whatever it is. I don't know. It just tastes much better. And, like, I think that's great. I don't want to go back to eating, like, the frozen carrots or whatever.
- [52:15]
Theo Von
Yeah, I guess that's a good point. But then there's some. Like, I saw this thing the other day. It was like a kitchen. They had, like, one of those robo kitchens or whatever. You know, when you order food from, like, something dash or whatever, and then you. But it's like, Hank's ribs, and then it's like, Marty's Pizza. And then it's like, Susan's, a salami shop. But they're all the same place, you know?
- [52:38]
Sam Altman
And when you get that from window Dash.
- [52:41]
Theo Von
Yeah.
- [52:41]
Sam Altman
You don't. You don't, like, you feel like something's missing. Right. You're like, this is fake. I can tell. I get less enjoyment. You would rather get that food from, like, the dude who's been making it and perfecting it on the. You know, that little pizza shop on the corner for the last 20 years.
- [52:58]
Theo Von
Right.
- [52:58]
Sam Altman
Because that's, like, part of. Like, that dude is part of the experience. That authenticity is part of the experience. Right. I don't think that goes away with a, like, fake robotic thing.
- [53:06]
Theo Von
Okay. Yeah. Because I think I start to feel like we're in this universe where it's like you're walking down the street or something, and, like, a waymo goes by, and it's like, eat now. And you're like, but. And you already did eat. It's just got a bad reading or something. It's got a bad valve in it or something. You're, like, yelling at it. There's nobody in there. And you're like, I already ate. It's like, sit down and eat now. And it just, like, uses, like, a T shirt cannon to just, like, shoot a burrito at your. And then you're sitting there, you're eating that, you know? And then the GLP car goes by. Right.
- [53:35]
Sam Altman
It says, I can help you out.
- [53:36]
Theo Von
Yes. And it's like, obviously, you've overeat. And you're like, I didn't even want to eat. That thing's messed up, right. You're yelling at a car that has no driver in it and then it shoots you with three GLP1 darts in the neck. And now your wife don't even recognize you when you get home or whatever.
- [53:51]
Sam Altman
You know, the fact that you find this so off putting, I think is a sign for optimism.
- [53:57]
Theo Von
Yeah. Like you're actually a good point.
- [53:59]
Sam Altman
You're wired. You're going to be resistant to that. That's not going to make you happy. That's not going to make other people happy. Now maybe we get tricked, like social media tricked us for a while, we got too addicted to feeds, whatever. But we realized actually this is not helping me be my best. Doing the equivalent of getting the burrito cannon into my mouth on my phone at night. That's not making me long term happy and that's not helping me really accomplish my true goals in life. And I think if AI does that, people will reject it. However, if ChatGPT really helps you to figure out what your true goals in life are and then accomplish those, you know, it says, hey, you've said you want to be a better father or a better, you know, you want to be in better shape or you, you know, want to like grow your business. If you want, we can change that goal and I can help you scroll TikTok all night or, you know, eat the burritos or whatever and I'll give you the GLP1 shots and I'll make you as healthy as you can. But like, maybe instead I can try to help convince you you should go for a run tonight.
- [54:57]
Theo Von
Mm.
- [54:58]
Sam Altman
And I think if AI feels like it is helping you try to accomplish your goals and be your best, that will feel very different than the last generation of technology.
- [55:07]
Theo Von
Yeah. And you know what? And that's where I'm like. And that's where a kid growing up right now, to them that would probably. Some young people, it might be like, that makes the most sense. I'm a little older generation, I might be like, oh, that seems a little. But that's always how things are. Generation and generation, always how it goes. Yeah, you're right. And maybe this is just like a quicker evolution of things and for young people it's going to make so much sense and for older people it's. And you're just gonna get off my, you know, avatar lawn or something, you.
- [55:33]
Sam Altman
Know, but that's the way of societal progress. That's just how it goes.
- [55:37]
Theo Von
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- [57:54]
Sam Altman
There have to be some rules here. There has to be some like guidelines. There has to be some sort of regulation at some point. I think it'd be a mistake to let each state do this kind of crazy patchwork of stuff. I think like one countrywide approach would be much easier for us to be able to innovate and still like have some guardrails, but there have to be some guardrails.
- [58:15]
Theo Von
Do you, have you met with governments and like government leaders to have discussions like that? Like, are they meeting with you? Because they might.
- [58:21]
Sam Altman
Yeah, yeah, they do meet with us. They haven't done anything big yet, but they're Talking about it.
- [58:26]
Theo Von
Do they meet with you to try to keep information out of you guys's data?
- [58:32]
Sam Altman
You know, for all of the paranoia about that, I don't think we've ever had someone come say like, I don't want it to say this negative thing about this politician or this, whatever the concerns are, like what is this going to do to our kids? You know, are they going to stop learning? There's a lot of concerns about that. Is this going to spread fake information? Is this going to influence elections? But we've never had the like, you can't say bad things about the President Trump or whatever. What about bias is a big, like they do want to know, like, you know, if it'll say bad things about one candidate, it'll say bad things about the other.
- [59:04]
Theo Von
Could you guys make it do one or the other? Like can you guys favor the back end or like.
- [59:09]
Sam Altman
We totally could. I mean we don't, but we totally could.
- [59:11]
Theo Von
You could?
- [59:12]
Sam Altman
Yeah.
- [59:12]
Theo Von
Wow. Yeah, I think like I know you. How do you like, do we give you guys a lot of detector tests? Every, like how do we know if.
- [59:19]
Sam Altman
You like test the system? You can, anyone can like test the AI and say. If I say this, say this.
- [59:23]
Theo Von
If I say, oh that's a good point.
- [59:25]
Sam Altman
But you touch on a really big point here, which is like hundreds of millions of people talk to ChatGPT every day and it probably has a big impact on what they believe. And so I think society's interest in making sure that we are a responsible neutral party should be huge. Now people do test it a lot and I think that's good, but we gotta be held to a very high standard there.
- [59:50]
Theo Von
But how do we like this as regular people or how do like regular people just held you guys to a high standard? Like is it the. I guess it's politicians responsibility or. I mean these guys are idiots. Someone, they're like 80 year old dudes giving thumbs up. That one guy couldn't get the WI fi on. Remember that guy? That guy couldn't get the WI fi on. So I'm like, how do we.
- [60:08]
Sam Altman
I mean there's a huge amount of people that test our systems all the time looking for any errors, any bias, any anything.
- [60:14]
Theo Von
I guess that's a good point. Is we can test.
- [60:16]
Sam Altman
You can tell. Yeah, right.
- [60:18]
Theo Von
People can test it on this end as, as AI grows, like how big do data centers need to be? Is that a concern of you guys?
- [60:28]
Sam Altman
I went recently to one of our new data centers under construction in Abilene, Texas. This is about Like a. Approximately one gigawatt facility. Huge. You know, it'll be the biggest data center ever built by the time it's done. And you stand in the middle of that and the scale of this project just hits you so big. That's like one little. That's like one little part of it, dude.
- [60:50]
Theo Von
That's like eight Costco.
- [60:52]
Sam Altman
You know, there's like 5,000 people there doing construction on it. And this thing is just standing up, making progress every day. And you stand in the middle of.
- [60:59]
Theo Von
This and what are you in a chariot or whatever? Like, how do you even.
- [61:01]
Sam Altman
You're like in a little atv. Oh, okay. It's like a dirty kind of construction site. But the scale of this thing. And then you kind of go in every room and you look at all the cables, the power, the cooling systems, rack after rack after sir of server, of servers, and it's humongous. There's like. They're standing up these like power plants right in the middle of it.
- [61:22]
Theo Von
Oh, yeah.
- [61:23]
Sam Altman
It's crazy.
- [61:23]
Theo Von
It looks. It starts to make our planet look like a software board. Like a.
- [61:31]
Sam Altman
It does. You know, when you see it from the air, I was really struck by that. I was like, this looks like the motherboard of a computer.
- [61:37]
Theo Von
Yeah, it looks like the motherboard of a computer. You start to see, like, how the planets in like a lot of these, like sci fi movies, a lot of them look. Have that R2D2 look on the outside.
- [61:45]
Sam Altman
Because they've been covered in data centers.
- [61:47]
Theo Von
Yeah. Which is kind of wild. Do you know where we're going and you're not telling? You know, I don't.
- [61:53]
Sam Altman
I don't.
- [61:53]
Theo Von
You promise?
- [61:54]
Sam Altman
Dude, I don't know. I mean, I have all my guesses. Like, I do guess that a lot of the world gets covered in data centers over time.
- [61:59]
Theo Von
Do you really?
- [62:00]
Sam Altman
But I don't know, because maybe put them in space, like, maybe we build a big Dyson sphere on the solar system and say, hey, actually makes no sense to put these on Earth.
- [62:07]
Theo Von
Yeah.
- [62:08]
Sam Altman
I wish I had like, more concrete answers for you. But, like, we're stumbling through this. We may be, you know, have a little bit higher confidence than the average person or can. But there's so much we don't know yet.
- [62:18]
Theo Von
No, I. That's the craziest thing about you, Sam. And. And I. I think this is a compliment somehow. Dear God. And it. Yeah, it is a compliment. You're like. It's like, you're like, come with me through the universe. And you're like. People are like, well, what's it like? You're like, I don't know exactly, but. And then we're all go. It's like we're all going. It's like, I don't know, you're just somehow the most, like, you're this, like this charming kind of terminator, it feels like. And I hate to say Terminator, that's a crazy term, but like. But you're this, like, you're like. I'm like, okay, I'm curious. You somehow seem so optimistic about. Adds to my curiosity.
- [62:58]
Sam Altman
When I was a kid, I assumed that there were always some adults in the room. Someone had a plan. Someone knew everything that was going to happen. Someone had it all figured out. And I sort of think why people like conspiracy theories is it's nice to think that someone's got a plan. It's nice to think someone that has it all figured out. And then I got a little bit older and I sort of started to suspect. There are no adults in the room. No one. People have plans. I have plans, but no one has all the answers. No one knows where it's all going to go. And now that I am the adult in the room, I can say with certainty, no one knows where it's all going to go. I'm the guy in the room, and I have some guesses and I have some plans. And we're working really hard, but, like, you know, we try to always say what we think the possibilities are, what we think is most likely. Often we're right. Sometimes it's in the broader set, and sometimes it goes in a totally different direction than anything we thought. And, you know, we keep trying to make progress, figure out more. We try to tell people. Not just tell. We try to show people by, like, deploying these systems and say, hey, you can go use it. Don't just take our word for it. Try it out, See what it can do. Yeah, but like, I can say with conviction, the world needs a lot more processing power. But if that looks like tiling data centers on Earth, which I think is what it looks like in the short term, in the long term also, or we do go build them in space. I don't know. It sounds cool to try to build them in space, but also really hard.
- [64:25]
Theo Von
What about, like, the environmental effects of those and stuff? Like, there's been, like, you know, there's been articles written, and I don't know how much of it is real or not real. Right. Because who knows what to believe? But you'd have to think that, you know, it Takes water to cool them, right? It takes power to power them.
- [64:39]
Sam Altman
Yeah.
- [64:39]
Theo Von
You know, there's some in like Arizona and Iowa that there's been like repercussions within the environments there in the communities. Would it. And a lot of those companies don't have to report those things because it's considered proprietary. You know, what do you think about those fears or how do you guys manage that? Like, do you guys talk about that? Do you meet with environmentalists? Like, what does that all look like?
- [65:01]
Sam Altman
I think we need to get to fusion as fast as possible.
- [65:03]
Theo Von
Get to what?
- [65:04]
Sam Altman
Nuclear fusion? I think that is the.
- [65:07]
Theo Von
Oh shit, what is it?
- [65:08]
Sam Altman
Where you basically knock two small atoms together and it makes a bunch of energy but no carbon. Very clean. Doesn't generate, you know, doesn't really harm the environment. And power can become like abundant and pretty limitless on earth. And we get out of all the current problems we're in.
- [65:24]
Theo Von
Are you guys investing in that?
- [65:25]
Sam Altman
We are, and I think I can help us figure it out even faster. So that's like a, you know, if you have to like burn a little bit more gas in the short term, but you figure out, you know, the future of energy with that, it's a huge win.
- [65:36]
Theo Von
And would you guys sell tickets to that or what do you think that would be like? Yeah, I think people going to watch that shit. I mean, yeah, people go to monster trucks. You don't think they'll roll up to watch those two things hit each other?
- [65:47]
Sam Altman
The atoms hit each other? Yeah, it's pretty hard to watch two atoms hit each other. But maybe with the, you know, somehow we can do it.
- [65:51]
Theo Von
Or what if they did like those sperm races where they put them under those big things.
- [65:54]
Sam Altman
I love those sperm races.
- [65:56]
Theo Von
Kind of crazy. I, I'm like, dude, there's enough of that going on.
- [66:00]
Sam Altman
Look, I think the way. Yeah, there'll be some way to watch fusion and it'll be awesome and it'll be like loud and bright and theatrical and it'll be making huge amounts of energy. Even if you can't watch the two atoms hit, you'll watch them collectively produce a fireworks.
- [66:17]
Theo Von
But we're going to need that. You think if we're going to get to.
- [66:19]
Sam Altman
I think so.
- [66:20]
Theo Von
If we're going to get to AGI or if we're going to get to Superintelligence, do we need that?
- [66:24]
Sam Altman
I bet we can get there without it, but to provide it at the scale that humanity will demand it. I think we do need it because people, the, the, the desire to use this Stuff, people are just going to want more and more and more. And eventually, like, the two things that I think matter most, the two kind of critical inputs are intelligence and energy. The ability to, like, have great ideas, come up with plans, and then energy is the ability to, like, make them happen in the world and also to run the intelligence. And I think the story of the next couple of decades is going to be the demand for these goes up and up and up to crazy heights. And we better find out how to produce a lot, otherwise someone's going to feel like they're getting screwed.
- [67:03]
Theo Von
Yeah. Dang, dude. I can't tell if I'm excited or scared. Maybe I'm both. And maybe it's all the same.
- [67:09]
Sam Altman
You have to be bothered. Both. You have to be both. I don't know if it's the same thing or not. I think it is kind of like they do feel related to me always, but I don't think anyone could honestly look at the trajectory humanity is on and not feel both excited and scared.
- [67:26]
Theo Von
Yeah. And maybe that's always been the way throughout time. And also, then, this is where we are. What are we getting? What are you going to do? You know, like, this is where we are. And so that's what's going on. I saw where you and Joe Rogan spoke about there possibly being one day, like, an AI president, you know, where. Like, what if you had this one kind of, let's just use the term supercomputer or this agent that was created that knew all the information and knew all of the problems and knew the best ways to solve them. Is that. Do you think that something like that is becoming more and more possible one day?
- [68:04]
Sam Altman
I don't know everything that it takes to be a president, but I do know it takes a lot of things that I don't have to do and that people are gonna. Well, maybe I could reframe it to an AI CEO of OpenAI, because I didn't know what that job is like.
- [68:18]
Theo Von
Okay.
- [68:18]
Sam Altman
That should be possible someday. Maybe not even that far. I think the idea to look at an organization to make really good decisions, there's a lot of things you can imagine that an AI CEO of OpenAI could do that. I can't. I can't talk to every person at OpenAI every day. I can't talk to every user of ChatGPT every day. I cannot synthesize all that information, even if I could. But an AI CEO could do that, and it would have better information, more context. It could, you know, massively parallelize this and I think that would lead to better decisions in many cases.
- [68:47]
Theo Von
Yeah. Because wouldn't a supercomputer something that has all knowledge which you think will get there?
- [68:53]
Sam Altman
I do.
- [68:53]
Theo Von
You do or.
- [68:54]
Sam Altman
I mean all knowledge is a hard thing to say. I think it will have vast, vast amounts.
- [69:00]
Theo Von
Will it be able to tell us about God or anything, do you think?
- [69:04]
Sam Altman
I'm super curious about that. I think it will be able to help us answer questions about the nature of the universe that we currently can't. And I feel very confused and very unsatisfied with our current answers. And there is clearly, to me at least, something going on well beyond our current capability to understand. And I would love to know what that is.
- [69:26]
Theo Von
You think it could help us learn more?
- [69:28]
Sam Altman
Yes.
- [69:31]
Theo Von
What it does. I wonder if God has a chat GBT or whatever or just wonder he got. He has the first one or whatever. But yeah, I'm just so curious, like how would that work? How does, how does OpenAI make money?
- [69:46]
Sam Altman
We sell ChatGPT. You pay 20 bucks a month, some people pay 200. But very few or relatively few pervert. I think they are mostly, hopefully they're just working super hard and using it for their job. And then we also sell an API so businesses can use. And they like pay us every time they make an API call.
- [70:03]
Theo Von
Okay. Do you think like there's a lot of these like kind of tech lords that are rocking right now, Right. And you get thrown in there.
- [70:13]
Sam Altman
You know, sometimes I'm like on the periphery.
- [70:15]
Theo Von
Yeah, yeah. Or you get certainly like, yeah, like these council, these councilmen kind of like, like, do you think there's bad artists amongst like these tech lords in these, in these AI realms? Do you think there's bad artists out there?
- [70:27]
Sam Altman
What does bad artists mean?
- [70:28]
Theo Von
Just like people that want for evil and not for good.
- [70:34]
Sam Altman
I think most people don't wake up. I think very few people wake up every morning saying, I'm going to try to make the world a worse place or I'm going to actively try to do evil. Clearly some do, but I think most of these people running the big tech efforts are not in that category. I think people get blinded by ambition. I think people get blinded by competition. I think people get caught up like very well meaning people can get caught up in very negative incentives, negative for society as a whole. And by the way, I include us in this, like we can totally get caught up in. We can be very well meaning, but get caught up in some incentive and it can lead to a bad outcome. So that's kind of what I would say. I think people come in with good intentions. They clearly sometimes do bad stuff.
- [71:21]
Theo Von
There's a lot of talk about, like, Palantir and Peter Thiel and their company about being like a, you know, they got to deal with from Trump about to have this surveillance or not a surveillance state, but to create a database on most of America. But it starts to feel like a surveillance state. You know, do you feel like we will need something like that in order for the future? You know, do you feel like something like that is included in the future?
- [71:52]
Sam Altman
So I don't know about that specifically. I mean, I think Palantir and Peter do a lot of great stuff. But again, I can't comment on this specifically what I'll say. Generally, I am worried that the more AI in the world we have, the more surveillance the world is going to want because the tool is so powerful. The government will say, like, how do we know people aren't using it to make bombs or bioweapons or whatever? And the answer will be more surveillance. And I'm very afraid of that. So I don't. I think we really have to defend rights to privacy. I don't think those are absolute. I'm like, totally willing to compromise some privacy for collective safety, but history is that the government takes that way too far. And I'm really nervous about that.
- [72:39]
Theo Von
Do you guys feel like the new government kind of, or do you feel like the government is still like a real thing?
- [72:44]
Sam Altman
I don't feel like the government anyway.
- [72:45]
Theo Von
You don't?
- [72:46]
Sam Altman
When the US government bombed Iran recently, I remember waking up that morning and seeing that news or whatever time it was, and I was like, oh, that's what actual power looks like. You know, that we're in like a. Maybe someday we get there. But it was like a really stark reminder of however important we think this is. It's like there are people that have just like this unimaginable power and might and can kind of do whatever they want. And that's definitely not us.
- [73:15]
Theo Von
Yeah. Yeah. I think that's been a lot in the Middle east recently is just like. It's just such a gross displays over there sometimes of inhumanity.
- [73:25]
Sam Altman
Absolutely.
- [73:26]
Theo Von
It's sad. What do you think a guy like, then like Palantir, Peter Thiel's endgame is? Do you think he has an end game? Because I think he seems like a dark lord to a lot of us. And it's like, does you think he has an end game that is, like, happy?
- [73:40]
Sam Altman
I think Peter is one of the most brilliant people I've ever met.
- [73:43]
Theo Von
Oh, he's smarter than me, that's for sure.
- [73:45]
Sam Altman
I think he does get caricaturized in the media as this, like, evil mastermind, as a villain.
- [73:51]
Theo Von
He does. I never met him.
- [73:53]
Sam Altman
I met him. We're very close friends.
- [73:55]
Theo Von
I should have brought it up then.
- [73:57]
Sam Altman
No, it's all good. No, no, no, no, it's all good. I don't feel that energy from him, but I. At all like. I. In fact, I think he's been one of the most important forces, at least in my life, for questioning assumptions about the path that society was on. And maybe I was like, oh, I thought this was all going well, but maybe we are in a tech stagnation. Maybe we really do have this huge economic challenge that no one's talking about. And so I think these people who are just very. That think very differently. He would call it very contrarian. Is super important to a society. Now, on the other hand, you know, maybe he. Maybe he sometimes does things like this that don't do him any favors.
- [74:52]
Theo Von
What is it you would prefer the human race to endure? Right. You're hesitating.
- [74:58]
Sam Altman
Well, I.
- [74:59]
Theo Von
Yes.
- [74:59]
Sam Altman
I don't know.
- [75:00]
Theo Von
I. I would. I would. This is a long hesitation.
- [75:07]
Sam Altman
There's so many questions. And should the human race survive? Yes.
- [75:13]
Theo Von
Okay, but, God, I mean, 22 seconds it took him.
- [75:18]
Sam Altman
Yeah. So if he were maybe like a more typical person, he would have just said an immediate yes and then said what else he wanted to say. And it took me a while with him to understand that his brain just works differently and society needs some of that. Like, he has these super different takes, and then he doesn't have maybe the circuit in his brain that makes him immediately say yes and then say what he was going to say.
- [75:42]
Theo Von
But, you know, his processors. Yeah.
- [75:44]
Sam Altman
I'm very grateful. He exists because he thinks of things no one else does.
- [75:48]
Theo Von
Yeah. You know. Yeah, you have. You want. Their novel thinkers have changed things throughout time, Sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worse, sometimes for the indifferent. But novel thinkers have. You've always, like. I don't know. It's always been part of humanity.
- [76:05]
Sam Altman
I'm probably super different and super weird relative to most people, but, you know, maybe I have some ideas as part of that that are, like, valuable to society collectively. And if I had this sort of very standard mindset, I wouldn't.
- [76:16]
Theo Von
That's a good point. Yeah. Well, do you think, and I'm just going to ask you brilliantly, do you think a lot of these guys have I mean, you know, it's not like, you know, love on the spectrum is like a big show, right. People, you know, it's like in those people are in love shit, every half. People I know are just, you know, barely. You know, they're crying in parking lots or whatever, but, you know, their spousal issues, whatever. But anyway, what I'm saying is, do you think that some of the creators now and some of the. The tech lords are almost have some tech built into them? Like, almost a. I don't want to say like an autism dude, because you can say that. Okay.
- [76:52]
Sam Altman
I think so. I mean, yeah. I, I, you know, to take the kind of, like, harshest look at us collectively, I can. You know, are we a little autistic on the whole? I would say probably.
- [77:02]
Theo Von
You know, I knew that shit.
- [77:03]
Sam Altman
That's all right.
- [77:04]
Theo Von
No, no, that's what I'm saying. For years ago, I was the first time I ever met some people with autism. I was like, dude, these guys are computers, right? Like, a lot of these guys are just, you know, they're some. They're kind of like a little bit of a cyborg in some way, in the way that they think. Right.
- [77:18]
Sam Altman
You know, look, I'm. You are this, like, impossibly charming cool guy, and I'm, like, kind of a lot more computery than you, but not much, though we can have it. We can still, like, figure it out.
- [77:28]
Theo Von
Yeah. And I don't really mean it is an offense, but I think we may need that in people to get whatever's next in the world. Do you think that's realistic?
- [77:36]
Sam Altman
Ye. Yeah. I think society needs, like, this very broad diversity of people. You need some people like me. You need some people who are more normal than me. You don't want too many of me, but, like.
- [77:45]
Theo Von
Yeah, yeah. You don't want too many of any one thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm just always, oh, my God. Yeah. These people are able to see things differently and quantify things differently. Do you always feel. Because some tech guys, they just have a different understanding of possibility. Right. A different understanding of feeling and think. Do you feel human all the time?
- [78:06]
Sam Altman
I do feel human all the time, but I feel like I. I have noticed that I think extremely differently about the future, about exponential change, about compounding technology than almost anybody else that I kind of come across in regular life.
- [78:20]
Theo Von
So that's cool.
- [78:22]
Sam Altman
I feel extremely human. I feel like, you know, driven by crazy emotions as much as anybody, but I am, like, very aware that I have a different lens than a lot of people.
- [78:31]
Theo Von
Have you met some people in tech space? You're like, whoa, that guy is only like 6 or 7%. He's low. He. Not a lot of human in him.
- [78:38]
Sam Altman
Yes.
- [78:39]
Theo Von
Yeah. Okay. Do you think it's inevitable that AI or AGI will merge into our bodies? I know you've talked about this before in the past. As things go along and advance quickly, do you start to see that a little bit differently? I know you've talked about how you don't think it's like a glasses thing or something.
- [78:57]
Sam Altman
I'll tell you a few fascinating story.
- [78:59]
Theo Von
Okay.
- [78:59]
Sam Altman
I was with a friend last week and.
- [79:01]
Theo Von
Did I offend you by asking that?
- [79:02]
Sam Altman
Not at all. Okay, zero percent.
- [79:03]
Theo Von
I thought that was a great answer. I really appreciate it. Because, yes, some of us are. We can't conceptualize sometimes how you guys are thinking it. Can't. I can't even like, we feel like we can't figure it out, you know, so it feels like it's almost like a unique. It's like, are we all evolving into this new kind of species and that's where we meet the future at anyway? And you're just like the dang Paul Revere out there, you know, it's like.
- [79:25]
Sam Altman
For better or for worse. I think whenever you see someone who thinks differently than you, it's like, I'm fascinated by you. I don't quite understand how you do your thing. I know I couldn't do it. I know you just understand the world differently than me, but I think that's cool. And I'm just like, all right, I'm glad.
- [79:39]
Theo Von
I. Yeah, that's how I feel. I think it's just. Thanks for just talking to me about it. Because sometimes I think I get afraid.
- [79:44]
Sam Altman
To say, I don't think you should be afraid. I don't think anybody be offended by that. I was talking to this friend of mine, though, about how he uses ChatGPT and he's been using it a lot for a couple years now. And he noticed recently that he started giving it personality tests. He'd upload any personality test he could find to ChatGPT and say, based on what you know about me, answer this. And he had never. He had never, like, told it. Here's my personality. It had just learned it from the questions he asked over the years and on everyone he tried it got exactly the answer and exactly the outcome he would get. And so that's not like he didn't get uploaded, he didn't get merged. He didn't plug some into his brain. But somehow like the pattern of him had gotten imprinted into this AI.
- [80:30]
Theo Von
Wow. Maybe we're not as complex as we think we are.
- [80:34]
Sam Altman
Or maybe we are and AI can just learn it really well. AI can like represent these very complex things. One of those two. But that was a real moment for me of like, wow, you know, the merge maybe can happen in a very different way than we thought.
- [80:48]
Theo Von
Yeah, yeah. Because you think of it as this thing kind of taking over your system and like, you know, your dad presses a button and you can't use the car, you know, you can't move for a month or whatever. Yeah, I think it kind of has that sort of energy. You just, you just finished the acquisition of this a little bit more like day to day business. You just finished the acquisition of Johnny Ives Hardware Company. Their hardware company.
- [81:16]
Sam Altman
Yeah.
- [81:16]
Theo Von
So clearly have some like, thoughts or interest in how like hardware and AI match up for each other in humanity. What was that about?
- [81:27]
Sam Altman
There have been two revolutions in computers in history. There was the keyboard, mouse and screen, that thing that was invented down the street in I think the 70s, where the people at Xerox PARC figured out what has become the modern computer interface. And then in the early 2000s, I guess Apple figured out this idea of touch on a device. And really those have been the two big ones. I think now there can be a third. I think AI is. It so changes the game that you can design a new kind of computer based off of a really smart AI where you can give a complex instruction to a system. It can go do it. You'll trust that it gets it right. You'll trust it to act on your behalf. It could maybe be aware of everything going on in this room. And it could not just be on or off, but lightly get our attention. If it wants us to know something, or maybe more aggressively get our attention. It could really be following what we're talking about here and remind us both of things later. And current hardware just can't do that. The current kind of computers we have I don't think are a fair. They don't honor what the technology is not really capable of. So I want to make a totally new kind of computer that is meant for this world of AI helping you all the time. I'm super excited about it.
- [82:40]
Theo Von
You are?
- [82:40]
Sam Altman
Yeah.
- [82:44]
Theo Von
You guys, there's this thing called agent that you guys had showed me earlier. I can take this out if I mention it and I wasn't supposed to. It was pretty fascinating. It was cool to see.
- [82:52]
Sam Altman
It is, yeah. This, this is a new thing that we just did. But the idea that an AI cannot just answer questions for you, but it can go actually do stuff on your behalf as your agent, it can go do research for you, it can go book something for you, it can go buy something for you, it can go change some things in the world for you and think more and use tools. I think most people think of ChatGPT as this app that you can ask anything, but it'll become this thing that can do anything and that'll change how you use computers, It'll change how you do things in your life. You know, if you.
- [83:26]
Theo Von
Yeah, I was watching the guy do it and it was just kind of fascinating. He was showing like one time he'd went to like a website and bought something he needed and then now moving forward, he could just be like, hey, go to this and make sure to get me these. Or go to, go here and see, go to the restaurants I like and see if there's any table available for 7pm tomorrow. And it was able to book it and do everything. It was like having a secretary right there.
- [83:47]
Sam Altman
It totally, when I first started using it, I was like, it was one of those moments where I could tell that, oh man, doing this the old fashioned way is going to feel like the stone age so quickly. You know, I'm going to like try to tell people someday. Like, do you remember when if we wanted to do something, we actually had to go like click around the Internet and like, you know, look for a table and then if we wanted to move it, we had to like call the restaurant and that's going to be unimaginable because of course you just tell your AI to do those things for you.
- [84:15]
Theo Von
Yeah, yeah. You feel like you'd almost just tell it to go eat too, you know.
- [84:19]
Sam Altman
That'S the fun part.
- [84:20]
Theo Von
Yeah. Oh yeah.
- [84:21]
Sam Altman
No one likes booking the table. Everyone loves sitting there eating.
- [84:23]
Theo Von
That's a good point, huh? Yeah, yeah. It won't take away the fun part. That's the thing. I think you got to remember that. It won't take away the fun part.
- [84:29]
Sam Altman
You're gonna do the things you want to do. There's a lot of things in your life you probably don't love doing. Like booking an open table is maybe one of them.
- [84:34]
Theo Von
Yeah. And then you'll have like old fashioned, like, I'll book it. You know, you're like, dad, what do you mean? Get off the phone or whatever, don't call. And you fricking weirdo, use a frickin. Use your agent. Totally like It. Oh, I'll book it. There's. There's like, a lot of, like, you know, Zuckerberg recently, like, kind of was poaching guys around town. Right. And I'll say it. You don't have to say it. Allegedly. I'm not saying he did. He hired one of my buddies. But what I'm saying is there's this hypothetical that he was like, kind of poaching guys around town. Is that. Did it. Did that feel like a mafioso move in the community? What was that like out here on. Out here in the tech trenches?
- [85:11]
Sam Altman
I mean, you know, they want to get into the AI game. I understand it, so. And if he's going to do this, he needs to hire some people, so bring it. Yeah, so bring it.
- [85:23]
Theo Von
So bring it. Yeah. Yeah. Dude, I'm going to upload myself into this plant in a second. Okay. No, but. No. Does it. Do you kind of like the competition? Is that fun?
- [85:33]
Sam Altman
It is. It's. Yeah. Compet, like, winning is fun.
- [85:36]
Theo Von
Yeah.
- [85:36]
Sam Altman
And I expect to win.
- [85:37]
Theo Von
And you got to love the comedy. That's part of it, right? It makes it fun.
- [85:41]
Sam Altman
I think what it would be like if we didn't have competition and drama in the world. It'd be so boring.
- [85:49]
Theo Von
Could actually.
- [85:50]
Sam Altman
Can I say one more thing about that? The best improvement I made in my life, in my, like, personally in my life and for my own happiness over the last couple years, got a lot of bad shit has happened to us. To me, it's been like a crazy, intense experience. And I just decided that I was gonna, like, learn to love the hard parts. I was like, you know what? If I'm in this crazy moment, if I'm in this, like, crazy thing, if I, like, feel my emotions are high, I'm gonna, like, make myself learn to be grateful for that, to love it, to find enjoyment in the. In the tension, in the competition, whatever. And actually it worked. And it. It kind of needed to work because, like, so many things go wrong in any given day. But I was, like, thinking about, you know, someday I'll be, like, retired on my ranch. I'll be sitting there watching the plants growing, and I'll be missing the excitement and the drama and the anger and the tension and the whatever. And so I'm gonna be, like, grateful for it and, like, learn to have fun with it. And now it, like, I cannot believe that that mind shift, mindset shift worked. But it did.
- [86:46]
Theo Von
And were there practices, like, in a moment, like, say, like a moment came up, like, some of the early ones Right. Because I agree with you that like having some mindset. Like, I used to hate traveling, like every week traveling for work. But then one day I was like, dude, you have to travel for work. Deal with it.
- [87:00]
Sam Altman
You may as well.
- [87:01]
Theo Von
You may as well because for years you've been a just. And right there, suddenly it wasn't bad anymore.
- [87:06]
Sam Altman
That happened for me too.
- [87:07]
Theo Von
Was there like a just a practice or was it just this verbal reminder like I'm going to do this?
- [87:11]
Sam Altman
I just kept saying to myself. I was just like, someday you'll miss these moments. You may as well find a way to like find the happiness and kind of great gratitude for them in the moment.
- [87:22]
Theo Von
Yeah. A lot of these guys have bunkers. Zucky has a bunky. I know that somewhere out in Hawaii people have bunkers. Do you have a bunker?
- [87:33]
Sam Altman
I have like underground concrete, heavy reinforced basements. But I don't have anything I would call.
- [87:41]
Theo Von
Look, I'll let you, I'll let you keep me on the ropes in a lot of this conversation, but I am going to call that out as a dang bunker, dude. Sam, that's of a bunch bunker.
- [87:49]
Sam Altman
What's the difference between a basement and a bunker?
- [87:51]
Theo Von
A place you could hide when it all goes off or whatever.
- [87:54]
Sam Altman
I know, Yeah. I have been thinking I should really do a good version of one of those. But I don't, I don't have like a. I don't have what I would call a bunker. But it has been on my mind not because of AI but just because of like people are dropping bombs in the world again. And you know, like.
- [88:09]
Theo Von
That's a good point. That's a very good point. Yeah. Based right there. Part of a house building typically used for storage, laundry, extra living space or utilities and then bunker built for protection. Often military or emergency related myth meant to withstand explosions.
- [88:24]
Sam Altman
We don't have that yet. Do you guys do this just for me or do you use chat GBT as the fact check?
- [88:29]
Theo Von
We did this just for you.
- [88:30]
Sam Altman
I appreciate it. This is nice.
- [88:32]
Theo Von
If could we, could we ever have. Instead of. So you start to see safe. AI comes over and there's this whole new kind of like, you know, I believe that one of the things that's been happening, there's been like a lot of like ice raids and people getting like taken out of their homes. And you know, there's been a lot of crackdown because part of me believes that they're having to get everybody documented or online basically because they're going to start to have this like, this like Facial recognition everywhere. Like, I have this idea of that. So, yes, this stuff had to happen because in a year or year and a half, you wouldn't even be able to be outdoors anywhere. Anywhere without a drone or something noticing you or some camera noticing that you're not supposed to be there or you're not there with documentation. Right. Whatever People's thoughts are on that. But just so part of me starts to see, like, okay, that's going on. Do you think we could ever then down the line have new countries, like, delineated by like, almost like a new AI landscape? Like, remember when on Snapchat, if you were in a certain realm, you could put like a filter on something?
- [89:37]
Sam Altman
Yeah.
- [89:37]
Theo Von
And they almost created these new like, like GEO barriers and stuff. Do you think we could potentially be looking at something like that one day?
- [89:46]
Sam Altman
I know that what you just said is going to happen. I know that we're going to have like, cameras on, you know, all over the place, and it's going to make the cities way safer because everybody, like, if you commit a crime, they'll have like a facial recognition hit on you right away. But, man, do I find that dystopic like you do. Of course. Like, I, you know, is it like a good trade if it means, like, people stop getting murdered in the streets? Yeah, sure. We agree to, like, give up some privacy for that. But sits so uncomfortably with me, you know, I. In like London or whatever, you see those cameras on every street corner and you're just like. You get used to it fast.
- [90:22]
Theo Von
Yeah.
- [90:23]
Sam Altman
But you're just like, ugh. It feels like privacy is important and, and like, you, you really are like, there's nothing I can do to live in the world and avoid all these cameras. And maybe it's worth it for society collectively, but feels like we really do give up a lot to get it.
- [90:45]
Theo Von
But could there one day, you think if we had that, then we could have whole new countries kind of that were.
- [90:50]
Sam Altman
What do you mean by new countries in this case?
- [90:52]
Theo Von
Like, say if there was this new kind of, this new like layer. Right. Of surveillance layer that's kind of in the, in the air, then could that be divided into different realms?
- [91:07]
Sam Altman
Oh, yes, totally. That can. I think there's all kinds of weird ways that that can happen. But. But the surveillance layer is so uncomfortable.
- [91:15]
Theo Von
Oh, yeah, it's going to be a nasty blanket. Is there anything else that you wanted to talk about, you wanted to get out that you want me to ask you about?
- [91:23]
Sam Altman
No, that was great.
- [91:25]
Theo Von
Why are there. Why does ChatGPT have that hyphen thing.
- [91:29]
Sam Altman
We gotta do something about that. You know, we have this team that figures out what the model's personality should be like and how it should behave. And a lot of users like EM dashes, so we added more EM dashes, and now I think we have too many EM dashes. But that's the answer is it was just like, users liked it, we put more in. Now it's like a little bit of a meme and it's kind of. It's quite annoying to me. We should. We should fix that.
- [91:52]
Theo Von
But you're thinking about it too.
- [91:53]
Sam Altman
I think we'll get it fixed.
- [91:54]
Theo Von
Okay. Okay. Before you go, Sam, and thank you so much for your time today.
- [91:58]
Sam Altman
It's been awesome.
- [91:59]
Theo Von
We appreciate it, man. It's helped me get to understand you. I feel like a lot. I think maybe differently than I. I don't know if I had a perception. I didn't know what to think.
- [92:07]
Sam Altman
What's the before and after?
- [92:09]
Theo Von
The before was like, a little bit like. I guess I almost thought kind of like, not as hopeful, but I don't know why. Maybe that's just my own. I think it's attaching my own perceptions of what I think about AI and stuff, or the possibilities of technology, you know, like that kind of stuff. Like that curmudgeony energy. I think I was probably attaching it to you and now I feel like, again, more whimsical about it. Kind of like. Or not whimsical, but like, let's see what can happen. Right. And so I think it's not just.
- [92:43]
Sam Altman
Let'S see, it's like, let's try to make it good, but let's realize that you have to, like, you don't get to see all the way down the road. You kind of got to go one turn at a time and you, like, light up a little bit more.
- [92:52]
Theo Von
Yeah, Yeah, I think. Yeah. I don't know. I just. I'm really. I'm really thankful for you, even. Let me tell you what I thought. What. What I was, like, judging and then. And then sharing, like, kind of where I thought, what I thought. Now, in 20 years, what do you hope your legacy will be? I. You're gonna have one.
- [93:09]
Sam Altman
I mean. Yeah, I guess. I. Yeah, you certainly don't. Only anyone sits around while they're in, like, the middle of the game thinking about, you know, what the review is going to be after. At least I don't. And.
- [93:23]
Theo Von
But this is a big review you'll have.
- [93:27]
Sam Altman
I have never been that motivated by like what? Like, I want to, like, play the game the best I can. I want to, like, you know, do the best work I can, have the most fun, like, have the most impact or the most interesting stuff. But then, you know, you retire, and then you die. And then, like, life goes on, and people as they're supposed to go on with life and forget about you and this whole thing of, like, I'm gonna live for how I'm remembered after I die and my legacy and, like, you're dead, you know?
- [93:55]
Theo Von
Do you have one of those deals where you save in your heart with those people?
- [93:59]
Sam Altman
What do you mean?
- [93:59]
Theo Von
Your brain. Sorry. With the people over there. Cryonics. You have a chronic deal.
- [94:04]
Sam Altman
No, I.
- [94:06]
Theo Von
Have you been approached about it?
- [94:07]
Sam Altman
I have been approached by it. There was, like, a.
- [94:09]
Theo Von
They haven't even approached me. Haven't asked for anything.
- [94:11]
Sam Altman
There was this, like, y. Company or company that I, like, helped out a long time ago by, like, giving some small deposit, and then, like, I never followed up on it, so I don't have anything in place.
- [94:21]
Theo Von
Okay. But maybe. Yeah, maybe just a down payment. Somewhere down there, things get weird. We'll go knock on their doors. Yeah. But thank you so much, man. James Bushira says hello. He's a friend of mine. He's a great guy. And. And we just appreciate you so much, Sam. Thanks for your.
- [94:36]
Sam Altman
Thanks for. Thanks for doing this. I really enjoyed it.
- [94:37]
Theo Von
Thanks for your time today. I thought it was very informative.
- [94:50]
Sam Altman
Oh. But when I reach that ground, share this piece of my life out. I can feel it in my bones. But it's gonna take.