Topic
45 facts from 19 episodes, in date order. These are what speakers said on the shows, each linked to the moment it was said. They aren't independently verified.
2015
Sam Altman says OpenAI was announced at the end of 2015 with a stated goal of working on AGI, and many people at the time thought that was absurd.
“announced the org at the end of 2015 and said we were gonna work on AGI, like people thought we were batshit insane”
2015
Elon Musk and Sam Altman, then president of Y Combinator, convened the 2015 dinner that led to the founding of OpenAI.
“So of course, those two shadowy figures are Elon Musk and Sam Altman, who at the time was president of Y Combinator.”
2020s
Sam Altman expects very capable AI systems by the end of the 2020s, possibly sooner, while calling the term AGI poorly defined.
“I expect that by the end of this decade, and possibly somewhat sooner than that, we will have quite capable systems”
2022
Sam Altman says he expected ChatGPT to be roughly the tenth fastest growing product in history, not the fastest.
“I thought it would've been like the 10th fastest growing product in history, and not the number one fastest”
2023
Sam Altman says the interview took place six days after GPT-4 launched.
“Today's Monday, we launched the previous Tuesday, so it's been six days.”
2023
Sam Altman says he considers consciousness strange but does not claim GPT-4 is conscious.
“I still think it's something very strange”
2023
Sam Altman says he considers it certain that capable open-source large language models with little or no safety controls will soon exist.
“There are soon going to be a lot of capable open source LLMs with very few to none, no safety controls on them.”
2023
Sam Altman names customer service as a job category that AI could shrink substantially in the near term, though he says he is not certain.
“I guess I would say customer service is a category that I could see. There are just way fewer jobs relatively soon.”
2023
Sam Altman says Silicon Valley Bank failed because it bought very long-dated instruments funded by short-term, variable deposits.
“buying very long dated instruments, secured by very short term and variable deposits”
2023
Sam Altman suggests that a full guarantee of bank deposits, or a limit far above $250,000, would stop depositors from having to doubt their bank's safety.
“a full guarantee of deposits, maybe a much, much higher than 250 k”
2023
Lex Fridman said Sam Altman had asked him how open OpenAI should be about GPT-4 and whether he would open-source the code.
“He turned the question to me of how open should OpenAI be about GPT four? Would you open source the code?”
2023
Kevin Scott said he and Sam Altman have discussed their suspicion that the next trillion-dollar company would be founded in 2023.
“I suspect that this year, like the next 1 trillion dollar company, gets founded.”
2023
Kevin Scott said OpenAI CEO Sam Altman testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee on the Tuesday of the week of the recording.
“Sam Altman was testifying in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee on, uh, like, Tuesday of this week.”
2023
Sam Altman says the OpenAI board shrank from nine members to six over about a year because the members couldn't agree on additions.
“It was nine and then it went down to six and then we couldn't agree on who to add.”
2023
Sam Altman says two board members called him on the Saturday after his firing to discuss his returning to OpenAI.
“Saturday morning, uh, two of the board members called and said, Hey, we, you know, destabilized.”
2023
In fall 2023, OpenAI's board ousted CEO Sam Altman after conflicts with him.
“You may remember that back in the fall of 2023, conflicts between OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and the board of directors there made news after the board ousted Sam.”
2023
Sam Altman was reinstated soon after his ouster, some board members left, and Bret Taylor became OpenAI's board chair.
“Soon after, Sam was reinstated and some people left the board. This was the tense moment when Bret Taylor came on as the board's new chair.”
2024
Sam Altman says most users don't need GPT-4 Turbo's 128K-token context window most of the time.
“Most people don't need all the way to 128 most of the time.”
2024
Sam Altman says ChatGPT's memory feature is an early step toward a model that learns about its user and becomes more useful over time.
“I think what people want, or at least what I want for myself, is a model that gets to know me and gets more useful to me over time.”
2024
Sam Altman used a rough estimate of 3 billion smartphone chips a year to argue that compute behaves unlike the phone chip market.
“Let's say they upgrade every two years, so the market per year is 3 billion system on chip for smartphones.”
2024
Sam Altman says Helion is doing the best work on nuclear fusion, which he sees as part of the energy answer for AI compute.
“I think Helion's doing the best work, but I'm happy there's like a race for fusion right now.”
2024
Sam Altman says he has never had or wanted super-voting control over OpenAI, even after the board crisis.
“I continue to not want super voting control over OpenAI.”
2024
Nilay Patel said Sam Altman recently stated that AGI will be possible on current hardware.
“Sam Altman, uh, recently said AGI will be possible on current hardware, and OpenAI is making a lot of noise about AGI for a variety of reasons”
2024
Capitella said he believes Sam Altman claimed the previous year that hallucinations would be solved, using this to express skepticism that prompt injection will soon be solved.
“I believe Sam Altman last year said they would have solved hallucinations, and I am not gonna continue,”
2025
Chris Benson says Sam Altman of OpenAI and Mark Zuckerberg of Meta constantly talk about AGI, which he views as marketing that drives pay.
“you'll notice that that's what that's all Sam Altman at OpenAI talks about all the time, and and so is Mark Zuckerberg with Meta.”
2025
Alex Heath says Sam Altman told a press call for the GPT-5 launch that he now thinks of AGI as a model that can self-improve.
“and he was saying now he thinks of AGI as a model that can self-improve itself.”
2025
Sam Altman said in January that OpenAI may have been on the wrong side of history regarding open sourcing technologies.
“He noted in, uh, in January that maybe OpenAI had been, and I quote, on the wrong side of history, close quote when it comes to open sourcing technologies.”
2025
Evan Ratliff says season two of Shell Game was meant to investigate the idea of a one-person, billion-dollar startup, which he says Sam Altman has discussed.
“I wanted to investigate the idea of the 1 person, 1 billion startup, or like the 1 person unicorn, which is something that Sam Altman talks about pretty often”
Undated
Sam Altman compares the focus on neural-network parameter counts to the earlier gigahertz race among processor makers, arguing that real-world performance is what matters.
“people got caught up in the parameter count race in the same way they they got caught up in the gigahertz race of processors”
Undated
Sam Altman recommends a blog post by Eliezer Yudkowsky as the best steel man of the case that AI alignment is extremely hard, though he disagrees with much of it.
“he wrote this one blog post outlining why he believed that alignment was such a hard problem”
Undated
Sam Altman says OpenAI began as a nonprofit but found early on that it needed far more capital than it could raise that way.
“we learned early on that we were gonna need far more capital than we were able to raise as a nonprofit”
Undated
Sam Altman says OpenAI's profit cap started at 100x and is much lower for new investors.
“It started, is that it's much, much lower for, like, new investors now”
Undated
Sam Altman says he helped start Worldcoin as a technological approach to the economic disruption AI may cause, and that OpenAI sponsored a large universal basic income study.
“I helped start a project called Worldcoin, um, which is a technological solution to this.”
Undated
Sam Altman says his working model is that the costs of intelligence and of energy will fall dramatically over the next couple of decades, making society much richer.
“the cost of intelligence and the cost of energy are going over the next couple of decades to dramatically, dramatically fall from where they are today”
Undated
Sam Altman says he still personally approves every hire at OpenAI and spends a large share of his time on hiring.
“I for real, truly do. Um, I still approve every single hire at OpenAI”
Undated
Reid Hoffman names Satya Nadella and Sam Altman as tech leaders who are learning to build responsibly.
“some tech leaders, you know, Satya Nadella, Sam Altman, are well on the learning curve.”
Undated
Sam Altman argues the right way to measure AI's economic impact is the share of tasks it can do, rather than the share of jobs replaced.
“The way I think about it is not what percent of jobs AI will do, but what percent of tasks will AI do?”
Undated
Sam Altman says the safest AGI scenario is a short timeline to AGI followed by a slow takeoff.
“I think short timelines, slow takeoff is the safest quadrant and the one I'd most like us to be in.”
Undated
Sam Altman proposes that AI companies publish the desired behavior of their models, so users can tell whether a failure is a bug or intended policy.
“it'd be nice to write out what the desired behavior of a model is, make that public, take input on it”
Undated
Michael Krigsman reports that Sam Altman said every successful startup founder can explain what they do in 25 words or less.
“he said that among startup founders, one consistent trait among every single successful founder is the ability to summarize and express what they're doing in 25 words or less in a really clear way.”
Undated
Jeetu Patel attributes to Sam Altman the saying that current AI is the worst it will ever be.
“Sam Altman says this quite a bit, which is this is the worst you'll ever see”
Undated
Host Rana says Sam Altman of OpenAI appeared on a live show of the podcast Hard Fork in June, and that Hard Fork's Kevin Roose has been a guest on Pioneers of AI.
“in June, Sam Altman of OpenAI joined Hartfork's live show, and we've had Kevin Roose on the show.”
Undated
Alex Heath quotes Sam Altman as saying at a dinner that someone will lose a phenomenal amount of money in an AI bubble while many others will make a phenomenal amount.
“Someone is going to lose a phenomenal amount of money, we don't know who, and a lot of people are going to make a phenomenal amount of money.”
Undated
James Clear attributes to Sam Altman the idea that people should have a high bar for working on anything other than deciding what to work on.
“I think Sam Altman has some quote where he said something like, uh, You should have a very high bar for working on anything other than thinking about what to work on”
Undated
A biotech CEO told Adi Ignatius that Sam Altman had urged him not to miss the boat on AI.
“recently who had met with Sam Altman, who urged him, you know, y- you do not wanna miss the boat.”
Episodes