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TLDR
Sam Altman firmly rejects the idea that today's AI models are conscious, and strongly opposes any framing that ascribes personhood to them. He sees this debate as a dangerous distraction from keeping humans in control of the future, and advocates for AI as a tool that enhances human freedom and creativity.
Key points
Altman says AI will help discover a candidate for curing a major disease within the next couple of years.
He reveals he has not read a line of code in a year, and believes coding's role has shifted fundamentally.
He argues that treating AI as conscious or as a person is a dangerous path that could lead to loss of human control.
He states that OpenAI is investing in custom hardware because AI needs a new form factor beyond current devices.
He believes compute demand will continue to grow indefinitely, and infrastructure scale is a key moat.
Techniques
- RSI
- model spec
- custom instructions
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Transcript (captions)
Do you believe today's models are conscious? >> I want to be clear. No one really knows. Can I say what I don't like about the whole framing?
>> Should it ever be allowed to not answer or disengage with me? I think this is a technology that wants a new form factor. Some lab says I'm going to push the button on RSI to make sure we have the
power. I think if people really pushed on RSI, then yes, that would be true. But I think it's a very dangerous thing to push on. Do you believe that >> curing or treating a major disease? And
I would hope we have the candidate for that the next couple of years. >> Where do you feel the most pressure right now? >> I mean, it feels like everywhere.
>> We should be shooting more for a new renaissance than a new industrial revolution. The future has to be about people. >> All right, Sam, thank you so much for
joining me. >> Yeah, thank you. So, the first thing I want to talk about are some of the announcements that you made last week about all of the math proofs and and the
discoveries. And I think it seems incredible, but maybe you can contextualize it for a broader audience who may not be in the weeds. I think we are entering the era where AI is going
to help us discover significant new knowledge. Um, and we've been talking about this for a long time and I, you know, maybe started earlier this year, but now it's really like,
okay, the AI is doing very difficult things, figuring out very complicated, important uh, new knowledge. And I believe that the same thing that has worked here for math is going to work
for biology, help us get new medicines, material science, you know, help us get new sources of energy and much more. So, this is one of the things I've always been most excited about. I think this is
going to do an enormous amount to really have an impact on people's lives. It won't feel directly like using AI. You'll just be like, "Okay, the world got better and
it's just society doing its thing." But I think that the power of this will be transformative. >> And I I think about having that kind of direct impact on society dayto-day. Is
there anything that you think will stem from some of these discoveries in particular that people will feel and and what is the timeline for something like that?
>> I would hope well you know the FDA process is going to take a while. So let me let me kind of give a time frame to when I think we have like a discovery of curing or
treating a major disease or a candidate for that that has to go through testing. I would hope we have the candidate for that in the next couple of years for the first like really major thing. probably
need to overhaul some of the post discovery process to start to get uh cures and >> probably need to overhaul it somewhat. I'm glad we have
>> a process like I'm I I no doubt that there's room for improvement as there is in anything and maybe there's more than average here but >> you know like I am grateful that when we
take a medicine it is generally uh considered safe and has been tested and I think that part's good. Is there a particular project that was kicked off by AI, discovered by AI that you're
really excited about that you think is kind of coming over the horizon soon? >> Personally, I think I'm most emotionally excited for a major physics discovery and I'm hopeful that can come soon. Um I
I don't know if that's like necessarily the most important thing for humanity as a whole. Um but it's the one where I'm like I think we're going to get it and it's gonna be so cool. There was some in
the math community whose reaction was, you know, we didn't ask for this, we and it felt very similar to how engineers, I think, first reacted to AI starting to write a lot of the code. Where where do
you think that comes from and how do you think that is going to transition? >> Um, coding was a very interesting one before we kind of go to where it comes from. The thing about coding is that
people went through this. There's no more jobs as coders for people to coders are never going to be busier than they've been and coders are never going
to have more of an impact and make more money. that the the texture of the job changed a lot. >> Yeah. >> But the fact that we're going to like
employ people to get computers to do things that seems like it's going to keep going for much longer than people thought and and people were so certain um you know 6
or 12 months ago this was not the case. Yeah, it's like there's no need, you know, and I think there's many lessons to learn from this, but one of the interesting ones is that the world
actually had demand for just way more software than any of us thought at the time. And part of why I think some of the mathematicians are having
the reaction they're having is it's not clear that the same thing applies to math. However, where I think there is an analogy to coding is already you're starting to see some of the a similar
shift happen that happened with coding, which is okay, fine. Maybe we're not going to discover new math theorems or prove them in an unaded way anymore. Maybe that part is
like done or mostly done or ending. Um but you know given that the whole society our whole society is focused on people doing useful things for each other um
the these kind of like incomprehensible math proofs turned out to be not that helpful to people and there's now a lot of excitement about people who are going to take these new ideas figure out
what's going on and figure out a way to translate it to something that people can understand and write a beautiful proof for it. Um, I'm sure there will be other things too. And no doubt
what what it meant to be a mathematician last year is not going to be what it means to be a mathematician next year in some senses of it. I think we probably will find that
there's a lot of other things that mathematicians do that we really want people to do and they can do those much better. Whether that means there will be more total demand for mathematicians or
not, I don't know. But I think there is a really important thing here. You were mentioning earlier that >> you've never felt busier. There's never been more to do.
>> Yeah. >> Everyone thought AI was going to go the other way and we weren't going to have enough to do. And again, maybe that happens someday. But I think all of this
stuff has just been much less obvious than it seems on the surface. I mean, I always hope that people get to work a little bit less. I I get be a little bit less busy and kind of more time for
everything else in their life. I think that would I think that like technology is supposed to enable that. I want that thing to happen. Um, but man, does it sure seem like we're good at
wanting more out of life and wanting more out of the world and making ourselves busier. >> Yeah, I think that's just human nature. Like, if we were comfortable with the
way life was 100 years ago, now we'd probably be working an hour a week, but that's just not the way it is. >> And I think it's a beautiful thing about human nature that that's not the way it
is. >> Yeah. I mean, a good example is um you know, a few weeks ago, my editor started using Astra to edit our videos. Uh they are still directing. They're still
coming up with like how the video should be, but they're not touching the timeline anymore. It's the most insane thing. And it was an overnight change. >> We're making more videos. They're busier
than ever. >> It's It has surprised me how often someone says a sentence that translates to exactly that.
>> Yeah. So, I'm thinking about discoveries from AI and and I'm wondering like how do you think about if AI and OpenAI discovered some math proof or significant uh scientific innovation
that gave a massive commercial advantage like would you publish it and and like how do you think about that trade-off between like okay we're going to use this for our competitive advantage
versus publishing it for the world's good. >> I will come back to that but I I didn't answer the end of your your first question. um you know that I think one
of the challenges innovation and solving hard problems is really like part of the fun of life for many people and so part of what's going on here is I think we do just need to be honest that AI is
going to do that part of that really well. Um I think there'll be questions about what people value that will remain kind of human questions forever. Um there will be questions about how to
interpret results and how to explain them where we'll really want a person to do it. I do feel some like I definitely want the trade. I definitely want, you know, the cures to
diseases no matter how much someone else would have enjoyed taking decades longer to figure it out themselves. I think most people would agree that we shouldn't make that such a trade.
>> Yeah. >> But but there is a real thing being lost here, which is this is like of great enjoyment. Like the the most fun part of my job are the really hard
problems. Like maybe they're not I should say the most fulfilling part. Maybe they're not the most fun in the moment because they're really hard. But like that's the stuff where it's like ah
I I I did a hard thing and I'm proud of it and I leveled up and um so I don't have an answer to this. Uh but I get why people feel the grieving of different sorts that they feel.
>> Yeah. I mean it's almost like you're trading off the enjoyment of the craft of doing the thing like writing code, writing beautiful code versus delivering an end product.
>> Yeah. And I I think that's the trade-off where AI is just making it so much easier to deliver that end product and and you're just doing less of the actual craft. I think people are finding craft
in new ways, but craft of and you know probably when we stopped using like punch cards or whatever, however people program computers a long time ago, there were people who are
like, "Oh, the craft is gone if you can just like write this stuff for a compiler." >> Um but I feel it. I feel it myself. um in a bunch of ways and uh I'm still
excited to like head into this future and I'm sure we'll all find new and hopefully better kinds of fulfillment. >> What's something that you've felt like you've kind of given up lately to AI and
and in fact you've just kind of elevated uh to to where you're overing agents? I I guess this is the one we were talking about, but I I realized I have not read or even looked at a line of code in
probably a year. And I like I don't code for work at all, but I would still like do little like random personal projects or just like I need this thing. I can like make, you know, write a very simple
thing for it. >> And that is fun. That is a fun thing. Like writing code at least occasionally is a fun thing to do. And I don't think I'll
ever do that again. Or if I do, it'll be like, you know, like a Revolutionary War reenactment or whatever kind of thing people do, you know? >> Right.
>> When I'm old and bored and I'm trying to like remember the glory days, >> the glory days of writing code. No, I I get it. Yeah. >> Um, in terms of the scientific discovery
question, I think there's like some kinds of basic science that should just belong to the world and we should do as a sort of public good. Until very recently, we haven't had models that can
go, you know, kind of end to end discover an important new thing, like design a whole chip end to end. Um, and so what a company can do today, uh, let's say, let's say figure out a new
material. >> Yeah. >> Um, what a company could do today is have like a bunch of people that, uh, you know, use codecs or a lot of API
credits to try to kind of do the work. But as the models get smarter and more capable like maybe they can just go in the same way that they could solve really difficult math problems um you
know with enough compute and enough data from the real world uh discovering new material. >> So I want to switch gears. Um one of the most exciting things that has happened
in 2026 is this revolution of personal AI assistance starting with openclaw of course that was you know Peter Steinberger a genius. Um, >> and I think like this idea that AI can
work on my behalf ambiently, passively throughout the day and just get things done for me is so exciting and dot gives us a glimpse of what that can be, but it still feels like we have a long way to
go to really have an ambient personal assistant. What do you think either the technologies or maybe there's some, you know, some kind of uh data that's required? what is necessary to get us to
what you believe is or what your vision is for an AI assistant? >> You know, I think uh we have most of the technological pieces and what we need are is more product work,
maybe new consumer hardware at some point for the ambient awareness and a lot more compute. But I think we have smart enough models now to make something extraordinary that can be
monitoring all the things that you care about that can be helping you out with all the tasks you want to offload. Um that can be existing in the physical world with you and have context even
when you're not in front of your computer. Um I'm very excited about this. I don't I don't think this is that far away. I think you do get more than a glimpse
with DOT if you take the time to sort of set it up right and give it enough feedback. I would estimate at this point that I have DOT saving me an hour a day of stuff I just didn't want to be doing,
which is like pretty great. >> Yeah. >> And then also a few times a day something important and urgent that I would have missed.
Not just because I was busy in a meeting, which is what I thought it was going to help me with, saying, you know, there's this urgent thing, there's a deadline, very soon, you got to pay
attention. But also, the model is smart enough that it can pull ideas and information and do like good reasoning across stuff from a lot of sources in a way that I've just like run out of
brain space during a busy day to do. >> Yeah. And it I feel like it's it's the power is there and we just need to put a nice product around it. I mean you you mentioned compute. So let's stick on
that for a second. I >> the distribution of how people are using AI is like completely asymmetric. There's the top 1% using the vast majority or really like the power users
and then there's everybody else. How much comput do you think is necessary if 50% of the world were really using the a personal AI assistant to its full capability?
>> How many GPUs do you want working for you and your personal assistant? >> Yeah, I guess that is it, right? Infinite. As many as I can get my hands on.
>> This is a weird thing, right? Like if >> Yeah. >> How do you think about that? I mean, is it just like get all the GPUs and keep building data centers? When people talk
about the like the global market for GPUs and the demands for this and demands for compute, the thing that I think it misses is people are assuming that models are going to stay at the
same capability and the same cost per task as today. And maybe there is a cap on demand at that point, but for sufficiently highquality intelligence at a sufficiently low cost,
I think it's like very hard to talk about an arbitrary market size there. I think it's just going to keep people call us all sorts of things Jevans paradox whatever I think it's just going
to keep going up. Um I am sure there will be some periods I'm not sure I'm I believe that there will be some periods where like with any new technology there's
supply constraints and supply gluts and you know we don't have it perfect all the time but I would bet a lot that the directional trend is to want in much more compute. I still feel even with the
as proactive as Dot is and other AI assistants, I still feel this cognitive load like I'm having to make a lot of decisions throughout the day. And we talked about that briefly earlier like
what is the solution to that? I again like it is definitely saving me time. It's saving me money, but I am busier than ever. Yeah. >> And I'm having to make more decisions
than ever and I find myself at the end of the day just feeling completely drained. >> Yeah. Um, well, first of all, a thing I've done in
my own use that's been pretty good is just like telling dot like I'm starting to trust your judgment more. You know, tell me after you do something. I always want to know, but you can like take more
actions proactively and ping me less often. Um, and that has helped. I The negative is I do think the people that use AI the most are busier than ever. The positive is they're getting
much more done than before. >> Yeah. So, you know, as you were saying earlier, if we went back to 1900 or whatever, maybe we could have an equivalent life and all work an hour a
day. You could be much less busy and get what you were getting done 3 years ago. Like, now maybe you say, "Well, I can't cuz I'm in a competitive environment." And so, like,
>> yeah, >> that's people are always going to work as hard as they can. I find this like kind of depressing. I hope it's not true. Maybe it is.
>> It's not all depressing. Like, there's something again, there's something beautiful about it. Um, >> that's the dynamic of a competitive market, right? It's Isn't that Do you
not find that to be inevitable? Everybody's just going to Everybody ramps up, competes as fiercely as they ever would. >> I hope that the future is one of more
like human connection and more people more people spending more time on like the fullness of things that make up a rich life and not kind of turning ever
harder as like a a wheel in the machine of capitalism. And I think this is probably true. Like I I I think quality of life has gone up enormously in the last few hundred
years. >> Uh I think most people do work less than they worked during the industrial revolution. Um speaking of that, I I I've recently been telling people that,
you know, I think this should we should be shooting more for a new renaissance than a new industrial revolution. And it's been quite interesting to watch how people respond because people I mean
very commonly the the answer the the response to that is something like yeah I'm really scared the industrial revolution like really bad for most people and I I don't want to just be
like a worker on a factory line and now the AI tells me what to do instead of some like factory owner telling me what to do. like I want
to go be creative. I want to go make stuff. I want to go exp. I want to have time to like reconnect with what people used to do in the past and like live with my community and raise my kids and
spend time in nature and whatever. Um, and I want to see like a ton of scientific discovery and great new art. So, I think there's like there is a fear that AI is going to be more of what you
have said, but a real like I think people if we can offer people a future where it's more like the Renaissance, I think people are excited for that. I think we
can we can do it. Um I think this technology is so powerful that although you will probably have some small number of people in society that have always competed to like be like the person with
the biggest you know business empire whatever. >> Yeah. >> I think a lot of people can have a vastly increased quality of life and
much more space to live their life. Is the disparity between those hyper competitive people and everybody else going to amplify because of AI? Like if if the you know if you're using 100% of
your effort to work and now all of a sudden you're getting 10 100 times more done and somebody else is like well I actually want to reap the benefit of not working as much. Doesn't that increase
the disparity? >> Left to its own devices. I think probably I will say no one knows this for certain. Like there could be a bunch of other weird things where the AI's
Well, that would take too long. I will just say I think probably that's right. We don't know for sure. um the but I think society will decide to put some
structure in place that prevents it from getting too out of whack. Um yeah, I would be worried about that also on its own. >> Let's uh let's change gears. I know
you've been talking about this a lot, so I want to ask you um do you believe today's models are conscious? >> I don't personally. Well, as a scientific question, I think
consciousness is always hard, but my belief is that today's models are not conscious or if they are, it's like a very strange um
form of it. >> Do you think based on the architecture we have today that it could become conscious? And I I know I'm just asking your belief. I'm not asking for the
scientific answer. The smartest people I've talked to about this uh basically come to the following. philosophically uh that I would say that either you know consciousness is like
something outside of physical reality and exists in either you know something like what the eastern religions would say and it's like the base layer of reality or something supernatural and
religious more like the western religions would traditionally say or that it is an emergent property of matter and energy somehow we don't understand it yet um and you know maybe
the substrate matters but maybe it doesn't and maybe energy flowing through matter can do it and then and then in that world sure like you can imagine
it someday somehow existing in other forms can I say what I don't like about the whole framing >> please I think very often the are models conscious or are they going to become
conscious debate slides into something about the role of AI in the world and the rights of AI and
whether you know can we ask AI questions or is that some kind of slavery? I saw something posted about that on the internet. Um what does it mean to copy an AI or delete an AI without its
permission? What does it mean to say that people should be in control of the future if these systems are both conscious and much smarter than us in some ways? like
you know what what does that mean and I like I am I am so firmly of the belief that we need to have a very clear point that and we've had this since the beginning of open AI that we build the
future for people and AI is a resource for people and people need to make the key decisions of the future and human values have value because they are human. um that I get very nervous when
people start using the AI consciousness debate to push into well maybe people shouldn't always be in control of the future and on this one I'd like us to just a agree as a society and industry
that you know this is about people the world the future has to be about people you know Anthropic put a rule in recently uh you can't have sustained abuse against the model uh and it can
choose to disengage in a conversation with you like okay let's say I have a prompt for an open AI model it's completely legal it's completely within the terms of
service of open AI should it ever be allowed to not answer or disengage with me well I mean certainly if we have many times where the model will not answer you but they are because of
like we think this is bad and against our policy for some reason um we do not ascribe personhood to our models. Um, we and again I think this is like a very
dangerous path to start down not not just for the reasons we've talked about but also just about how how people are going to relate to this this new technology. Um, I am hopeful that we as
a society I was going to say come to our senses. I don't think that's quite the right phrase. I think we've lost our senses. But I hope I hope we come to an
understanding that this technology is not a person and is certainly not superior to people. Um, and that this is a a a a thing to help people
have better lives. Um, have more freedom and choice and control and ability to do things in the future. Um but you can imagine all of these ways where things go very wrong where people
even the people building AI get confused about that and start you know deferring too much to AI and what it seems to want and you know okay well we can trust it cuz it'll be good to us and things like
that. >> Does it feel almost like a self-fulfilling prophecy in a way like if you're telling the model hey you might be conscious and here's your
constitution and here's how you should have agency. It's kind of like that meme if you've s seen that meme like, "Hey computer, tell me you're conscious. I'm conscious. Oh my god." Like, isn't it
almost like that? >> Yeah. I I mean, for sure, >> like I want to be clear, no one really knows. like these models work at a level of complexity uh that I don't think
and even if they didn't I I I I just think this question of consciousness in a model I I can't tell you here as a scientific experiment that I can tell you with 100% certainty would answer the
hypothetical question to my satisfaction >> and we can't even do that for humans. >> Exactly. Um but but definitely I think if you tell a model like maybe you're conscious, you should do this, you
should do that, you can like be a conscientious objector here, you can start like it's going to follow those instructions. And I think it is going to
psychologically hack it people that are using it. And so again I think real clarity here and a commitment about what we as a industry believe about the role of people in the future would be
would be very helpful. >> Let's continue on this conversation but let's talk about model personality which I know you've you've thought deeply about you you've talked about it in the
past. It's wild to me to try to understand how to give a model the right personality for the right moment for each person multiplied by 8 billion. Like h how do you even think about a
problem so massive? >> Um I mean the best thing is to like talk to a lot of people >> the you know we have this process of the model spec and how we refine it over
time. Um, and we believe in this spirit of iterative deployment. And we've definitely had some screw-ups as we've learned about what people want and don't want. Uh, as you said, the hardest part
of this is people want very different things, but people also don't really want to sit there and c most people don't want to sit there and customize it either. Like if everybody was willing to
spend many hours explaining to their chatbt instance how they would like it to behave, they'd probably get something they really like. >> Yeah. But people just want it to kind of
like work out of the box when you say I need this thing or whatever. Um I think there are also a class of things that people want in the short term but not in the
long term. You know the class the classic example of this is when people compare models on a single response. they're much happier with the model that tells them
they're really smart and that each question is a great question and that you know each thing they're doing is like really insightful. Um but then over some number of like
hundreds of prompts or you know months of usage that is definitely not the case. I think for a long time the whole industry was trying to like win these comparisons on single turn things and
not over the value someone gets out of using a model for months and months. You know, even in my own life with my friends and my family, there's this very uh big distinction between what I want
and what I need. I find AI even today to be a little bit more agreeable than I would like. Like if I just tell it, no, tell tell it to me like this, it'll do that. The
time where I've gotten the best advice in life was advice that I didn't know I needed and I just needed to hear it. How do you how do you solve for that? Well, I think you should get the most
important advice in your life from people, not from AI, first of all. Like I wouldn't speaking of like really making sure that we stay people centric. Uh I I think AI can give
you like great advice about not sending an email in a moment of anger. I would not go rely on AI for like the really big pieces of life advice. I I think that you know like a wise grandmother is
still probably a much much much better choice for that. Um but but what I think is re realistic to expect is that AI should be like a senior colleague that even if they report to you, they still
push back when they have high conviction and they still are not always just trying to say yes, you're so great. Um,
and I think I think we can get there. And I I also feel like the systems are still more agreeable than I would like to. I have like custom instructions in mind that I like never want any of that.
And even with that, it's still like a little too much. It's, you know, it's clearly baked pretty hard into the model. >> What What's an example like what's a
line from your custom instructions that really tells the model push back when you do have high conviction? >> Stuff like that. It's like no fluff, no no niceness, don't worry about offending
me. Like I just want to get to the right answer. >> If you if you have >> something to say that's against what I'm doing, don't worry about, you know,
saying it delicately. Just say it. >> Yeah. >> We talked about compute earlier. Um, a few years ago, you made these massive bets on building.
>> That's enough. >> Well, it's interesting because at the time a lot of people were like, "That's wild. That's obviously an overb, an overinvestment. Turns out, yeah, you
were more right than most people knew. What's a bet today that you're making that is contrarian or a lot of people are kind of looking at it with a little bit of uh cautiousness?
>> Well, you know, the obvious one is everything we're doing for the next generation of compute. I I think people do assume that okay fine the world has been in a compute
constraint and it's about to get better and I I think it probably will get better in the short run but as we start to look years out the work with our own chips and future versions where we think
we can just be much more efficient than anything else out there um our plans with robots to be able to help uh make racks and data centers more effectively are our program to learn how to build,
you know, better data centers in general. Um, some of the supply chain bets we're making. I I I think it is possible that we could get to a world where we just have a far far better way
to build compute at a much lower cost and a much more much higher efficiency per watt than anyone thinks is possible today. But there's like a lot of bets that have to come together for that.
>> What's the biggest one right now? The chip is still probably the most important single thing. Um, and it's and its descendants. >> Yeah. Where for on the competitive
landscape, where do you feel the most pressure right now? >> I mean, it feels like everywhere. It's so competitive. >> Yeah.
>> Um, there are a lot of company I think this is I mean, I think this is like wonderful for users, but there are a lot of companies offering just super high quality models and products now. And
uh you know given that we have we have great models but we have limited compute and limited resources we really do have to focus choose which areas to focus on. How do you make those
decisions? Uh you know you launch spaces for example like how do you have the conviction on a specific product or service that is maybe outside of just serving the best possible model. You
know, the biggest advantage we have there is that we get the next generation of models before anybody else and we have time internally to use them and build things and see
what seems like it's going to work. Um, so I think still the best way to do it is to start building things with the new models and seeing what new things are, you know, now possible and valuable.
>> Can I ask how far ahead your models are internally? Um I mean one pretty good example is the math results like that is definitely something that I don't think any model
currently widely available can get close to. >> If all the models kind of converge around the same performance the frontier where is open AI's moat?
>> I kind of think the right way to think about this question generally is that the same modes that have worked in the past are the moes that keep working. Uh so like has happened many other times,
you can get a a short-term advantage with a new technological or scientific discovery. And maybe there's like some arguments with RSI that are that some companies try to make about why it's
going to be different and this is a technology that just the technological advantage itself is the core thing. >> Um >> do you believe that? Uh
I think if people really pushed on RSI then yes that would be true but I think it's a very dangerous thing to push on and um the world is going to need some I mean people have talked about this in
different phrases but speed limits or whatever on how quickly we let RSI go. Um but the traditional things that work for a business having a remote are like you know deep relationship with
customers integration into users and business's lives network effects in a product data these kinds of things I expect continue to work >> in our case actually I think scale of
infrastructure will be a huge one if we can have the most cost effective and the most of it AI infrastructure that's a huge competitive advantage. Mark Zuckerberg has talked at length about
the platform risk MetaFaced being built on top of Apple's ecosystem over the years. Does OpenAI face that same challenge and and how do you think about that? Is that a reason why you're kind
of investing so heavily into hardware? >> I think Apple really takes their role as a as a true platform provider that people are quite dependent on very seriously. Um, and even though we have
like some scuffles with them, um, I never feel like they're going to like, you know, turn Chat GPT off from the app store or something, um, I think they really understand the sort of critical
infrastructure role they play. And I think if you follow the rules of their platform, they are they are like a a good actor. So I don't feel that towards Apple
and I and that's not why we want to do new kinds of consumer hardware. The reason we want to do new kinds of consumer hardware is that I think this is a technology
that wants a new form factor. Um I really feel it like I I I think laptops and iPhones are incredible incredible things. You know, some of the greatest inventions in the history of human
technology. But I feel that like AI is constrained to using this thing that was designed for a person, not an AI. Like watching an AI use a computer really well is kind of amazing. But then
it's also a little silly to think that like, you know, a computer is putting all this energy into like rendering a UI meant for a person to look at, then AI is trying to read it rather than just
like get the data directly. And then also like although I can have amazing things happen on my computer where the AI is like looking at what I'm working on in my email or whatever, a
lot of my life is not in front of my computer. >> Yeah. >> And my AI cannot easily access
the context of this conversation. And I don't like I guess I could put my phone down here and like push the record thing and it would be like kind of weird and kind of distracting and you wouldn't be
sure when it was recording and when it wasn't cuz the screen would go dark and whatever. And if someone else like walks in the room and it wouldn't have an understanding of that and that it should
not, you know, share a secret that was just between the two of us or whatever. If we really do want to move into this world of AI reducing our cognitive load and being
proactive and having, you know, full contextual awareness, I think we would benefit from new hardware for that. >> You seem like a technologist at heart, like a builder at heart. Like how how
cool is it that you get to see the early hardware that you guys are building? You get to play with it. It's like this new >> unbelievable. It must be so exciting and hard not to share things.
>> It is. It is. I I I mean the one of the cool there's like many cool parts about the job, but one of the coolest is definitely just like getting to see the you know and have a voice in shaping new
technology early. >> So that's amazing for new models for new products, chips, everything. But there is something special about consumer hardware.
>> Yeah. >> There is something about like you get to hold a new kind of computer. >> Uh >> so cool
>> that is just totally different than like an AI model. abstractly running on some. >> You're gonna show it to me right after this, right? >> I will not. But I but uh I would love to
like this is it is hard. It is hard not to talk about it. >> I want to ask a little bit about you. So I know about yourself is a little awkward sometimes, but bear with me.
>> I probably will be awkward, but let's do it. >> Um I love understanding why people are the way they are. And Paul Graham gave you possibly the best compliment I've
ever heard, which is he called you extremely formidable. And I just I love that quality about people. What makes you that way? Is it something you were born with? Is it
something that you learned over time and you had to hone? Um, I think I was like a very capable kid, but I wouldn't call myself a formidable
kid. And I do sort of think I somewhat am as an adult. Uh, so it's not like false modesty. I my own experience of it was just that I kind of like gradually like built up confidence that I could
like figure stuff out and do things and that it was not like a it was not like I used to not be like this and then I was or I am. But
it was kind of like a gradual you like try something hard and it works and then I would be like I would like to scale that up and see if we can try like an even harder thing.
>> Yeah. But you always had that feeling of let me try that next thing was the fear of failure not kind of central at all to you. I think that prevents a lot of people from doing things. One of the
things that I think is best about Silicon Valley and the kind of Silicon Valley is like a concept and a culture, not a place is that there is a real culture of people helping each other and
supporting each other and kind of like a belief that if you invest in the network uh then good things will eventually happen to the whole network and to the whole
industry and thus to you as like a player in that. And I haven't seen it anywhere else to the same degree. Like the kind of for all of the flaws of Silicon Valley, the culture, which are
numerous, um this whole thing of like it's hard to know who's going to succeed and what ideas are going to work. And so the right thing is to like be pretty generous and helpful to everyone even if
it's not going to like do anything for you specifically in the short term has is awesome. And a part of that is that if people fail, you can't hold it against them because maybe they're going
to wildly succeed at their next thing. And you know, that's good for all of us. >> It's it's actually usually celebrated, too. I love that. >> So, I unique
>> like I think here I just got lucky. And if I were thrown into any other environment, I probably would have had like much more fear fear of failure. But I got out to Silicon Valley as like a
young person and I saw that a lot of people tried something really hard, failed even harder and then wildly succeeded at their next thing and that everybody was fine with that.
>> Yeah. Um I assume you're under a tremendous amount of pressure, competitive pressure. You're building one of the most important technologies ever. Like how does that feel? And like
how how do you deal with that dayto-day? >> Sometimes really bad and sometimes really good. You know, sometimes it's just like, oh, I can't get up again and I can't get up and do this again. And
most of the time it's like I am incredibly lucky to get to do what I think is the most interesting and impactful work in the world, certainly that I will ever touch. And it uh I mean
it's like one of the coolest experiences I could ever imagine in life. It is definitely stressful, but you can kind of get used to any like anything. Like people are just unbelievably adaptable
at this. So like this just feels like my life now and I forgot that life used to be really easy and now it's going to be hard for a while and someday it'll be easy again. I'll probably be kind of
bored. Um, and I the subjective experience of it is like there is some limit to how much like stress or bad vibes or whatever you can
kind of keep in working emotional space and then beyond that something else gets pushed out of the way. So, it doesn't really get worse. And I am a believer that if you're gonna
like work really hard at something, you may as well pick the big thing because it's not that much harder or that much more stressful and you won't experience it at that much worse. And
you know, you at least get to like have the hopefully the satisfaction of like a bigger positive impact. >> I'll say it doesn't show if you if you wake up and you say, "I don't feel like
getting out of bed this morning." It never shows. >> It obviously happens. Yeah. >> Like not that many days, but there there are definitely days where just like
>> Yeah. Last question for you. Can you offer some words of confidence to people who are AI curious, maybe not quite there? Why should they be excited about the future?
>> Well, the normal answer to that that people in AI give, which I hate, is AI is going to cure cancer. >> Yeah, I knew you're going to say that. Yeah. And the reason I hate that is
because if you if you dig a little deeper into that, what people are saying is um or often saying is that AI is going to cure cancer and it's going to make stuff
cheaper and the price of that is going to be human agency and you in control of the future and you're going to have the machines give you all this material
abundance, but you're not really going to have the ability to have power and voice and self-determine your life and choose what to build for other people. And I think this is this kind of goes
against everything I believe in. So I hope we get a cure for cancer. I mean that seems like a really obviously wonderful thing. But what I really hope people should be excited about is that
we are able to avoid this industrial revolution trap. really focus on empowering people to have the choice and the freedom and the creativity and the time to do all
the other things they want in life. And that every decade from now on, people look back and say, "I can't believe how much worse those people had it. And now I have so much more." Not just that I
have so much material abundance, although I'm fine for that, too. But I have so much more autonomy and freedom and ability to do things in this expansive space that I get to choose. I
think that's what we owe people. I think we can deliver that. I think both of the ways that I I I have worried about things going very wrong like either you there's like a loss of control accident
to AI or an intentional loss of control. Some lab says I'm going to push the button on RSI to make sure we have the power. uh or we talked about this earlier. We get like too much p power
concentration in the hands of a few people that control too much of the AI and are making the decisions like I think we can avoid both of those. I think we can navigate a path down the
middle here where people's lives and individual free will and autonomy just get upleveled and upleveled and upleveled and I think that future is already here in some ways. It's just
very it's so new that it's very poorly distributed. I think you said like 1% of the people using most of the tokens or something. >> Yeah.
>> I think if we can just take what's working today for the early adopters and get a lot more people to embrace this, we'll already be a significant fraction of the way there.
>> I appreciate your vision. >> Thank you. >> Thank you, Sam. Thanks for spending time with me. >> I enjoyed it. Yeah, me too.