So I would love if you could, you touched on this, but just describe in a little bit more detail how and why you felt like you had to move from a nonprofit structure to a for-profit structure and like, was that like a light bulb going off or the simple, the simple thing was we just needed vastly more capital than we thought we could attract, not that we thought we tried, that we were able to attract as a nonprofit.

You know, we knew that scaling computers was going to be important, but we still really underestimated how much we need to scale them. Yeah, so does that suggest that nobody can do AI as a nonprofit in any kind of a meaningful way?

No, there are other things that you can do for sure, but to be at the front of scaling research, which I think you probably can't do that as a nonprofit.

What about as government? Government could do anything they wanted.

Right, right. Well, but yes and no. So again, one of the things we try and pick at is that there's some things that firms are much better at than government.

So I mean, do you think the Department of Energy or the Department of Defense could do Open AI as well as you guys do? The Apollo program was pretty impressive, so do you think that could possibly be another route?

I think, you know, in some sense, in a well-functioning society, I think this would be a government project, but that seemed to be a big F given that that's not happening.

I think it's better that it happens this way and happens, you know, like as an American project.

Okay. You also then said a couple of times that the there's a role for the government or you, I think you use the word society to play in setting some of the guard rails or in directing things so that equity is built in more than a role like maybe that's like society should play the role there but how does that?

Like society is not like a thing. No, it's a complex negotiation of a lot of different stakeholders.

But we kind of do, we know, you know, we do this, we get this right over time. Give me an example.

How do we get it right? Airplanes are really safe. Boeing problems aside, in general, airplanes have been remarkably safe. That happened largely as a result of kind of old-fashioned regulation.

Uh, I would say it happened because people want to get on an airplane and know that they're not going to die and society responds to that, right?

Well, specifically government responds. Airplane manufacturers also, if they want to keep selling airplanes that people want to get on, definitely governments have a role.

Um, the scientists and engineers working on it feel a sense of obligation. I think it's a, I think it is a multi-party thing, but there's a huge role for regulation for sure.

And are you, how are you? You're clearly going to be be a player in this game as it unfolds, big player.

I'd put money on it. So how are you thinking about it? And I compare it a little bit, having been at HBS, when the internet happened, sort of the folks who were you and when social media and the internet were happening, we're saying no, government, cyberspace wants to be free.

You know, keep, keep the black helicopters out of our business. How are you thinking about sort of your position Visa the government?

I mean, I hope, I hope it's like a real partnership. It's been fairly constructive so far. Um, too much regulation clearly slows innovation, not enough clearly leads to a whole set of other problems.

Everyone agrees I think on those two statements and then there's just a question of where you, where you should be on that spectrum, and do you think there's particular parts of the government that, I know you're working with DHS, but DOE, DOD?

I mean, where would you most like to build bridges?

I mean, I, it's easy to be too optimistic and drink the Kool-Aid too much in this, but I think this is going to touch like all parts of society and all parts of government.

But those are hard things to to build for sure.

And, but you know, like the internet touched all parts of society pretty much, right? And but arguably we got some parts of that really wrong. I was going to say we got a lot of that wrong, we got some parts right, and I don't think most people would say undo the internet even with all the problems.

Yeah, but it's kind of interesting watching my students, a lot of them having grown up on social media would like that part of the internet to go away for sure.

And there will be parts of AI that you will you would like to go away.

But how many of your students would push a button and like destroy all computers in the entire internet? Oh, none, none. Um, so there will be parts you don't like.

There'll be parts your students 10 years or not don't like either, but on the whole, I think it'll be a huge net win.

And so, and some of the students asked you this, but maybe I'll ask you to go a little deeper in it. If you think about from either the societal perspective or the commercial perspective, what are the pieces of AI that you're most excited about personally?

I think greatly increasing the rate of scientific discovery is what I'm most excited about.

I believe that that is, if you zoom all the way out, that is how the world gets sustainably better um and I think doing more of that is awesome a lot of other areas too.

I think there'll be incredible AI tutors, incredible AI medical advisors.

But but personally speaking, I'm so excited for AI for science. In any particular parts of science? I mean, I guess if I had one personal thing to pick, I would say like, you know, go solve all of physics.

But uh no, I'm excited for it everywhere.

So why all of physics? I I have incredible personal curiosity and I also believe that, you know, the more we can understand about physics, the more we can manipulate the universe and I don't know what will come of that, but it seems probably important to find out.

So then the obvious question, what happens to the physicists if we TR I was being a little facetious there.

If we truly, if there's truly no problems left in physics at all, then I I don't I don't know.

Um, what I suspect is that we answer the current questions and find more and harder and more interesting problems.

So have you read um this piece by John Maynard Keynes, Economic Prospects for Our Grandchildren? No. Okay, we have to, I have to send it to you.

It's it's brilliant. So Keynes wrote it in in 1930 and he's talking about what the world is going to look like 100 years.

You must you must know. Yeah, because he you know, it's this a similar set of issues that once you solve all the problems and he has he comes up with sort of a weird answer to it that we're just going to make art and and not care about money.

I mean, do do you think about those kinds of existential questions?

What happens to the physicist? What's happens? You know, everybody has been debating this for a long time and he was I think sort of right and sort of wrong.

Um, there is some sense in which you could go back to the 1930s and look at a lot of people today, you would say they are just making art and they don't care about money, they're all fine, but that's not their experience of it.

If you could look at the people today and go forward another 100 years and ask them what they think about those people of the future's jobs, we'll say, you know, it's a weird definition of art, but okay, they're making art and none of them care about money.

They have unbelievable material abundance and you think a little bit harder and say, well, they seem busy and stressed and they seem to be getting a great deal of satisfaction out of the work they're doing and they don't quite call it art and, you know, they still feel like they don't have enough and they want more and they're still finding new ways to compare each other, compare with each other and, you know, maybe they're now instead of like looking at whether their house is bigger or smaller than their neighbors, they're looking at whether they own a nicer Galaxy or less of a nice one than their neighbors, but I think the human drives are just going to keep going.

Human nature doesn't, I don't think so, doesn't seem to change. So one of the things I write about in my weird books is the um prediction that we're going to fall in love with robots, which is an exaggerated version of what I actually do think is true, that that we are going to embrace AI entities as as emotional companions.

What's what's your sense? I mean, are you are you a fan of the kind of Singularity type Vision where there is this merging and we start to build emotional connections with things that are created rather than born.

Yeah, I suspect that entertainment in the future will look quite different and maybe it does, you know, maybe a lot of the time spent watching TV or playing video games today is replaced with an interactive experience with AIs and we probably do derive some version of companionship from that, but for most of us, I think the premium on, you know, the real human authentic version of it goes up, not down, in that kind of a world.

So I'm sure we'll be talking to AIs a lot and I'm sure it'll be a fantastically entertaining world, but I would bet that there's something deep about human nature where just the knowledge that it's another real person or not really matters, although sometimes you know, I talk to some of the people I care about the most entirely through text because we're in the same city, so I might not know if they were being replaced.

I might be fine with that. If they were dead, well, that's the question. If you knew it was not a real person behind it, would it be any different?

And I would posit that you would. Yeah, we're going to find out, right? We're going to find out, but I think you will.

Okay, all right, so we should make a bet on it and, you know, I would be happy. See, 100 years from now, I give you nice odds.

Okay, so I want to go back to one other piece of that you raised in your talk earlier, you know. One of the kids asked the question about um equity and and and you had a very nice answer that which I agree with that this your talk earlier you the one of the kids asked the question about um equity and and and you had a very nice answer that which I agree with that that this the technology is probably going to drive to equity, but it's going to need some nudging, kind of nudging do you have in mind?

Well, first of all, I think it may not need any nudging at all. Sometimes technology doesn't. Um, and I also think that knowing the right kind of nudging academically is hard to do.

You kind of have to do it experientially. Like I'm sure all of my ideas right now are totally wrong.

Um, I think I think a tight feedback loop and watching where the problems are being created, fixing those, finding the new problems, that's kind of how I believe will have to be the nudging.

Although it's hard, right? I mean, like I I just came back from Denmark.

You can see doing that in a country like Denmark, small, they have really good data.

Like the U we you know, the US takes 30 years to pass any kind of regulations. So how do you how do you think about that nudging?

I mean, I hope the companies will do it. Okay. Okay. I think, yeah, if if you're relying on US regulation, that but you have I actually taught your piece last night, two nights ago, the Moore's Law for Everything.

How did it hold up? No, I think it's quite that I thought it's very interesting, you know, because you're talking about changes in the taxation system which are not particularly far-fetched.

I mean, they're doable, whether they're doable in the current political situations in different question, but you know, basically talking about it, you know, tax on land and and uh and technology, basically, yeah, companies.

I I mean, I like it. Have you would you still oh I still think that's right for sure.

I just, I don't remember all. Uh, no, I think that, I think that in a world of AI, um, tax in income and corporate profits primarily is not quite right.

Like, we do need to switch to a tax on capital somehow, it seems to me. Yeah, yeah, no, I think that, I mean, I, it's just a really interesting idea that hasn't gotten sufficient track because it's different than a UBI.

I mean, it's connected in some ways, but it's different.

If you had one wish for AI, what would it be? Love humanity. Can you build that in? I think, so, like, how do you, one of the things that has worked surprisingly well is the ability to align an AI system to behave in a particular way.

And so if we can articulate what that means in a bunch of different cases, and yeah, I think we can get the system to act that way.

Do you think OpenAI can and should, like, have the power to make its own rules? Like, should, why should we trust you?

You shouldn't. Okay. I don't think you should. I don't think we will.

I don't think we should. Yeah, I'm not, by the way, that does not necessarily mean that the right thing to do is to hand it over to like a government bureaucrat either.

One of the directional kind of thing that I think is interesting is you could imagine one of these systems chatting with all of its users, saying, explain to me your value system, and then I'm going to collectively align across that.

I am a believer that the users of technology, the people impacted by it the most, deserve the loudest say in its governance.

So you could do something like that. I mean, is that feasible?

especially again given the vast sums of money totally feasible, like again, I think that's really a new thing that is enabled by this technology that just wasn't possible before.

Okay, so is that something like what Anthropic is pushing towards? I don't know what they're doing.

I'm not, I'm not sure. No, CU, I mean they had this sort of seemed a little, a little naive, the idea of, you know, we're going to put our design principles out there for kind of crowdsourcing what I was thinking.

I mean, I think it's very good to say, here's how we're making these trade-offs of what this system will do and not do, but what I was saying, what I meant more is, um, I, I, I'm interested in the thought experiment of an AI chats with you for a couple of hours about your value system and does that with me and with everybody else and then says, okay, I can't make everybody happy all the time, so it's essentially sort of using AI to come up with a consensus, well, using AI to talk to everybody to understand the consensus in a deep level of billions of people, okay, which we can't do without AI probably, okay, but it would, it would just be interesting, um, to line up something like that against kind of the foundation in documents of this country, which are explicitly for better or worse against majority rule.

Now, what you're describing is different, but I guess foundational pretty quickly. Well, but it is fundamentally about democracy with some power checks on it.

Yeah, yeah, you'd have to think about what those look for sure. Yeah, so if, if the consensus is that it's bad AI, you know, that, that it's evil, so how do you come up with the checks?

Well, I think that should be part of like what people should vote on for the governance structure.

비영리를 영리로 전환한 이유 (샘알트먼)

Scripts