Sam Altman says he’s most excited to see AI accelerate scientific discovery over the next 10–20 years. He believes faster breakthroughs in science could lead to massive, long-term improvements in quality of life for everyone.
Greg Brockman is the CTO and cofounder of OpenAI - https://twitter.com/gdb Szymon Sidor is a Research Scientist at OpenAI - https://twitter.com/sidorszymon Sam Altman is the President of Y Combinator and Co-Chairman of OpenAI - http://twitter.com/sama Watch their bot compete at The International - https://openai.com/the-international/ YC's podcast is hosted by Craig Cannon - http://twitter.com/craigcannon
Sam Altman sits down with Reid Hoffman to talk about the key changes founders should think about as they transition from a startup to a scaleup. This conversation took place at The Scaleup Offsite, a private CEO gathering hosted by Y Combinator Continuity and Greylock Partners in April 2017.
Apply to AI Startup School in SF: https://events.ycombinator.com/ai-sus GPT-4.5 is here, and it has major big model energy. OpenAI's largest model to date, it excels at natural conversation, creative tasks and complex planning. YC General Partner Tom Blomfield breaks down why 4.5 matters, how it fits into the broader trajectory of AI development, and what founders need to know. Chapters (Powered by https://bit.ly/chapterme-yc) - 00:00 - Intro 01:55 - GPT-4.5 04:28 - Testing 05:38 - Limitations 07:32 - Outro
#openai #gpt4 #gpt5 #samaltman #tech open ai update, when is gpt5 released, gpt5 news, openai podcast
ChatGPT-5 just launched, marking a major milestone for OpenAI and the entire AI ecosystem. Fresh off today's live stream, a16'z Erik Torenberg was joined in the studio by three people who played key roles in making this model a reality: - Christina Kim, Researcher at OpenAI, who leads the core models team on post-training - Isa Fulford, Researcher at OpenAI, who leads deep research and the ChatGPT agent team on post-training - Sarah Wang, General Partner at a16z, who helped lead our investment in OpenAI since 2021 They discuss what’s actually new in ChatGPT-5—from major leaps in reasoning, coding, and creative writing to meaningful improvements in trustworthiness, behavior, and post-training techniques. We also discuss: - How GPT-5 was trained, including RL environments, and why data quality matters more than ever - The shift toward agentic workflows—what “agents” really are, why async matters, and how it’s empowering a new golden age of the “ideas guy” - What GPT-5 means for builders, startups, and the broader AI ecosystem going forward Whether you're an AI researcher, founder, or curious user, this is the deep-dive conversation you won't want to miss. Timecodes: 00:00 ChatGPT Origins 02:13 Model Capabilities & Coding Improvements 04:11 Model Behaviors & Sycophancy 06:15 Usage, Pricing & Startup Opportunities 08:03 Broader Impact & AGI Discourse 16:59 Creative Writing & Model Progress 31:50 Training, Data & Reflections 36:25 Company Growth & Culture 41:39 Closing Thoughts Resources: Find Christina on X: https://x.com/christinahkim Find Isa on X: https://x.com/isafulf Find Sarah on X: https://x.com/sarahdingwang Stay Updated: Let us know what you think: https://ratethispodcast.com/a16z Find a16z on Twitter: https://twitter.com/a16z Find a16z on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/a16z Subscribe on your favorite podcast app: https://a16z.simplecast.com/ Follow our host: https://x.com/eriktorenberg Please note that the content here is for informational purposes only; should NOT be taken as legal, business, tax, or investment advice or be used to evaluate any investment or security; and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any a16z fund. a16z and its affiliates may maintain investments in the companies discussed. For more details, please see a16z.com/disclosures.
#product #productmanagement #openai #reasoning
It’s fair to say that few people in tech are positioned to have a bigger impact on the future than Sam Altman. As the CEO of OpenAI, Altman and his team have overseen monumental leaps forward in machine learning, generative AI and most recently LLMs that can reason at PhD levels. And this is just the beginning. In his latest essay Altman predicted that ASI (Artificial Super Intelligence) is just a few thousand days away. So how did we get to this point? In this episode of our rebooted series "How To Build The Future," YC President and CEO Garry Tan sits down with Altman to talk about the origins of OpenAI, what’s next for the company, and what advice he has for founders navigating this massive platform shift. Apply to Y Combinator: https://ycombinator.com/apply Chapters (Powered by https://bit.ly/chapterme-yc) - 0:00 Coming up 0:43 Intro: Is this the best time to start a tech company? 6:27 How Sam got into YC 10:53 The early days of YC Research 12:49 Getting the first OpenAI team together 17:13 Why scaling was considered heretical 21:42 Conviction can be powerful 26:15 Commercializing GPT-4 28:53 What drew Sam to create Loopt 30:24 Learning from platform shifts 33:15 Tech incumbents are unaware of what is happening with AI 34:08 Sam's recommended startup path 36:56 Reflecting on the OpenAI drama 39:58 What startups are building with current models 44:16 Outro: Advice for early founders + final thoughts
Full Episode: https://youtu.be/UTuuTTnjxMQ Website & Transcript: https://www.dwarkeshpatel.com/p/sholto-douglas-trenton-bricken Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/2dtDauiE4v8ldNRqPFq0uP?si=7S4n69QuTjeYz0lZwW4xIw Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/sholto-douglas-trenton-bricken-how-to-build-understand/id1516093381?i=1000650748087 Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/dwarkesh_sp Trenton Bricken's Twitter: https://twitter.com/TrentonBricken Sholto Douglas's Twitter: https://twitter.com/_sholtodouglas
Full Episode: https://youtu.be/UTuuTTnjxMQ Website & Transcript: https://www.dwarkeshpatel.com/p/sholto-douglas-trenton-bricken Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/2dtDauiE4v8ldNRqPFq0uP?si=7S4n69QuTjeYz0lZwW4xIw Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/sholto-douglas-trenton-bricken-how-to-build-understand/id1516093381?i=1000650748087 Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/dwarkesh_sp Trenton Bricken's Twitter: https://twitter.com/TrentonBricken Sholto Douglas's Twitter: https://twitter.com/_sholtodouglas
Nick Turley is Head of ChatGPT, the fastest-growing product in history, with 700 million weekly active users (10% of the world’s population). He was part of the original hackathon team that shipped ChatGPT in just 10 days, helped it grow from zero to billions in revenue, and leads product for what may be the most consequential product of our time. We recorded this the day before GPT-5 launched. *We discuss:* 1. The 10-day sprint from deciding to ship ChatGPT to Sam Altman’s tweet (and why it was originally called “Chat with GPT-3.5”) 2. How they ran a willingness-to-pay Van Westendorp survey in their Discord to decide on the $20/month price point that everyone copied 3. The “Is it maximally accelerated?” philosophy that drives OpenAI’s insane shipping velocity 4. Why ChatGPT’s retention curve “smiles”—users leave, then come back months later using it more 5. The accidental decisions that changed history, including not having a waitlist 6. The impact ChatGPT will have on SEO and product growth 7. The counterintuitive reason why shipping unpolished AI features beats waiting for perfection 8. Why ChatGPT intentionally shipped with that “ugly” model-chooser dropdown 9. How TikTok comments became a primary user research channel early on *Brought to you by:* Orkes—The enterprise platform for reliable applications and agentic workflows: https://www.orkes.io/ Vanta—Automate compliance. Simplify security: https://vanta.com/lenny PostHog—How developers build successful products: https://posthog.com/lenny *Transcript:* https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/inside-chatgpt-nick-turley *My biggest takeaways (for paid newsletter subscribers):* https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/i/170411252/my-biggest-takeaways-from-this-conversation *Where to find Nick Turley* • X: https://x.com/nickaturley • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicholasturley/ • Website: https://nickturley.com/ *Where to find Lenny:* • Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com • X: https://twitter.com/lennysan • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/ *In this episode, we cover:* (00:00) Introduction to Nick Turley (04:52) GPT-5 launch (09:13) The vision for ChatGPT and AI assistants (13:52) The early days of ChatGPT (17:14) The success and impact of ChatGPT (20:44) Product development and iteration (23:11) Maximally accelerated: the OpenAI approach (26:17) Retention and user engagement (33:42) The future of chat interfaces (36:31) The evolution of ChatGPT (38:52) Subscription model and pricing strategies (42:10) Enterprise adoption and challenges (44:10) Balancing multiple product lines (52:13) Emergent use cases and user feedback (01:02:15) OpenAI’s unique product development approach (01:05:07) The importance of team composition (01:08:50) Balancing speed and quality in AI development (01:14:23) The role of evals in product development (01:16:13) The future of AI-driven content and GPTs (01:21:51) Philosophy and product leadership (01:23:47) Career journey and advice (01:27:49) Lightning round and final thoughts *Referenced:* • GPT-5 and the new era of work: https://openai.com/index/gpt-5-new-era-of-work/ • Instacart: https://www.instacart.com/ • OpenAI’s CPO on how AI changes must-have skills, moats, coding, startup playbooks, more | Kevin Weil (CPO at OpenAI, ex-Instagram, Twitter): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/kevin-weil-open-ai • Sam Altman on X: https://x.com/sama • Figma: https://www.figma.com/ • Van Westendorp’s Price Sensitivity Meter: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Van_Westendorp%27s_Price_Sensitivity_Meter • Rahul Vohra on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rahulvohra/ • Superhuman’s secret to success: Ignoring most customer feedback, manually onboarding every new user, obsessing over every detail, and positioning around a single attribute: speed | Rahul Vohra (CEO): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/superhumans-secret-to-success-rahul-vohra • Dropbox: http://dropbox.com/ • Airtable: https://www.airtable.com/ • Notion: https://www.notion.com/ • Instant Pot: https://instantpot.com/ • MS-DOS: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MS-DOS • Expanding on what we missed with sycophancy: https://openai.com/index/expanding-on-sycophancy/ • What we’re optimizing ChatGPT for: https://openai.com/index/how-we're-optimizing-chatgpt/ • Charlie Munger’s quote: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/11903426-show-me-the-incentive-and-i-ll-show-you-the-outcome • Anthropic’s CPO on what comes next | Mike Krieger (co-founder of Instagram): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/anthropics-cpo-heres-what-comes-next • Beyond vibe checks: A PM’s complete guide to evals: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/beyond-vibe-checks-a-pms-complete ...References continued at: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/inside-chatgpt-nick-turley _Production and marketing by https://penname.co/._ _For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email podcast@lennyrachitsky.com._ Lenny may be an investor in the companies discussed.
Logan Kilpatrick leads developer relations at OpenAI, supporting developers building with the OpenAI API and ChatGPT. He is also on the board of directors at NumFOCUS, the nonprofit organization that supports open source projects like Jupyter, Pandas, NumPy, and more. Before OpenAI, Logan was a machine-learning engineer at Apple and advised NASA on open source policy. In our conversation, we discuss: • OpenAI’s fast-paced and innovative work environment • The value of high agency and high urgency in your employees • Tips for writing better ChatGPT prompts • How the GPT Store is doing • OpenAI’s planning process and decision-making criteria • Where OpenAI is heading in the next few years • Insight into OpenAI’s B2B offerings • Why Logan “measures in hundreds” — Brought to you by: • Hex—Helping teams ask and answer data questions by working together: https://www.hex.tech/lenny • Whimsical—The iterative product workspace: https://whimsical.com/lenny • Arcade Software—Create effortlessly beautiful demos in minutes: https://arcade.software/lenny Find the transcript and references at: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/inside-openai-logan-kilpatrick-head Where to find Logan Kilpatrick: • X: https://twitter.com/OfficialLoganK • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/logankilpatrick/ • Website: https://logank.ai/ Where to find Lenny: • Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com • X: https://twitter.com/lennysan • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/ In this episode, we cover: (00:00) Logan’s background (03:49) The impact of recent events on OpenAI’s team and culture (08:20) Exciting developments in AI interfaces (09:52) Using OpenAI tools to make companies more efficient (13:04) Examples of using AI effectively (18:35) Prompt engineering (22:12) How to write better prompts (26:05) The launch of GPTs and the OpenAI Store (32:10) The importance of high agency and urgency (34:35) OpenAI’s ability to move fast and ship high-quality products (35:56) OpenAI’s planning process and decision-making criteria (40:22) The importance of real-time communication (42:33) OpenAI’s team and growth (44:47) Future developments at OpenAI (47:42) GPT-5 and building toward the future (50:38) OpenAI’s enterprise offering and the value of sharing custom applications (52:30) New updates and features from OpenAI (55:09) How to leverage OpenAI’s technology in products (58:26) Encouragement for building with AI (59:30) Lightning round Referenced: • OpenAI: https://openai.com/ • Sam Altman on X: https://twitter.com/sama • Greg Brockman on X: https://twitter.com/gdb • tldraw: https://www.tldraw.com/ • Harvey: https://www.harvey.ai/ • Boost Your Productivity with Generative AI: https://hbr.org/2023/06/boost-your-productivity-with-generative-ai • Research: quantifying GitHub Copilot’s impact on developer productivity and happiness: https://github.blog/2022-09-07-research-quantifying-github-copilots-impact-on-developer-productivity-and-happiness/ • Lesson learnt from the DPD AI Chatbot swearing blunder: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/lesson-learnt-from-dpd-ai-chatbot-swearing-blunder-kitty-sz57e/ • Dennis Yang on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dennisyang/ • Tim Ferriss’s blog: https://tim.blog/ • Tyler Cowen on X: https://twitter.com/tylercowen • Tom Cruise on X: https://twitter.com/TomCruise • Canva: https://www.canva.com/ • Zapier: https://zapier.com/ • Siqi Chen on X: https://twitter.com/blader • Runway: https://runway.com/ • Universal Primer: https://chat.openai.com/g/g-GbLbctpPz-universal-primer • “I didn’t expect ChatGPT to get so good” | Unconfuse Me with Bill Gates: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-Ymdc6EdKw • Microsoft Azure: https://azure.microsoft.com/ • Lennybot: https://www.lennybot.com/ • Visual Electric: https://visualelectric.com/ • DALL-E: https://openai.com/research/dall-e • The One World Schoolhouse: https://www.amazon.com/One-World-Schoolhouse-Education-Reimagined/dp/1455508373/ref=sr_1_1 • Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams: https://www.amazon.com/Why-We-Sleep-Unlocking-Dreams/dp/1501144324 • Gran Turismo: https://www.netflix.com/title/81672085 • Gran Turismo video game: https://www.playstation.com/en-us/gran-turismo/ • Manta sleep mask: https://mantasleep.com/products/manta-sleep-mask • WAOAW sleep mask: https://www.amazon.com/WAOAW-Sleep-Sleeping-Blocking-Blindfold/dp/B09712FSLY Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email podcast@lennyrachitsky.com. Lenny may be an investor in the companies discussed.
#openai #samaltman #chatgpt #gpt4 #gpt5 openai podcast, openai update, ai news, chat gpt update, gpt 5, ai for developers
YC Partner Jared Friedman covers hard-tech companies and why founders should consider starting one. He also covers a couple of the most common problems hard-tech companies face and how to solve them, with examples from seven YC companies. You can find the lecture slides and transcript here: https://www.startupschool.org/videos/78 Find more Startup School and YC content at https://www.startupschool.org/library. Chapters (Powered by https://bit.ly/chapterme-yc) - 00:00 - Introduction 00:36 - Outline 00:56 - What is a Hard Tech Company? 01:35 - Market vs Technical risk 02:06 - Why start a hard-tech company? 02:42 - Story about Boom 05:38 - Hard-tech and Biotech - Big part of YC 06:04 - Startup School 06:20 - How much of YC's advice applies to hard-tech founders? 07:05 - Two biggest problems specific to hard-tech 07:14 - Heavy MVP 07:58 - Boom - Do things that don't cost money 08:46 - Solute 08:47 - Solugen - Start small 09:35 - AirX - Launch a simplified version 10:22 - Notable Labs - Bootstrap with a service 10:45 - Astranis - Start with a proof of concept 11:33 - Ginkgo Bioworks - Sell it before you make it 12:24 - How do you prove people will want your product if it is not built yet? 12:49 - Pre Sales 13:27 - Letter of Intent (LOI) 14:20 - Advice about LOIs 14:43 - Fundraising for Hard-tech and Biotech companies 15:38 - A better fundraising plan 17:26 - Q&A 17:40 - AI companies 19:36 - Hard to get LOIs 20:53 - How do you prove that your idea is going to work? 22:15 - Sales 23:24 - Find founder and early employees for Hard-tech companies
Lecture Transcript: http://tech.genius.com/Sam-altman-lecture-20-closing-thoughts-and-later-stage-advice-annotated Sam caps off the How to Start a Startup series with things you should ignore when you start, but become important a year in. Thanks for watching How to Start a Startup. Hope you learned a ton! See the slides at http://startupclass.samaltman.com/courses/lec20 Discuss this lecture: http://startupclass.co/courses/how-to-start-a-startup/lectures/64049
Lecture Transcript: http://genius.com/Kirsty-nathoo-lecture-18-mechanics-legal-finance-hr-etc-annotated There's a lot that goes behind the scenes in running a startup. Getting the legal, finance (equity allocation, vesting), accounting, and other overhead right will save you a lot of pain in the long run. Kirsty Nathoo, CFO at Y Combinator, and Carolynn Levy, General Counsel at Y Combinator, cover these very important topics in this lecture. See the slides and readings at http://startupclass.samaltman.com/courses/lec18 Discuss this lecture: http://startupclass.co/courses/how-to-start-a-startup/lectures/64047
Bloomberg’s Caroline Hyde and Ed Ludlow discuss the impact of the stablecoin legislation that passed the Senate with White House AI and Crypto Czar David Sacks. Plus, Klarna CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski talks about the startup's super-app ambitions, Zoox CEO Aicha Evans joins from the company’s new facility to mass-produce robotaxis, and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman claims Meta is offering bonuses as high as $100 million to OpenAI staffers to jump ships. -------- "Bloomberg Technology" is our daily news program focused exclusively on technology, innovation and the future of business hosted by Ed Ludlow from San Francisco and Caroline Hyde in New York. Like this video? Subscribe and turn on the notifications for Bloomberg Technology on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrM7B7SL_g1edFOnmj-SDKg Watch the latest full episodes of "Bloomberg Technology" with Caroline Hyde and Ed Ludlow here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfAX25ZLrPGRzfILkSd-YiWfsoloCETAe Get the latest in tech from Silicon Valley and around the world here: https://www.bloomberg.com/technology Follow Ed Ludlow on Twitter here: https://twitter.com/EdLudlow Follow Caroline Hyde on Twitter here: https://twitter.com/CarolineHydeTV Connect with us on... Twitter: https://twitter.com/technology Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BloombergTechnology Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bloombergbusiness/
Sam Altman and Garry Tan Hold Office Hours at Startup School NY 2014
Sam Altman and Craig Cannon go through questions submitted on Hacker News. To submit a question for Office Hours, send an email to Macro@YCombinator.com with a few sentences of context and your question. 0:10 - As a B2B company how do you get sales outside of your network? 1:55 - Should you go to meetups? 3:01 - How do you expand your network? 5:25 - When founding a startup, is being a college student an advantage or a disadvantage? Does it matter at all? 9:01 - How can a student with no technical background go start a startup? 9:59 - How can a nontechnical person vet a technical person? 10:45 - What should people do when they're not technical but want to build some technical skills? 11:12 - Why do you think crowdfunding for startups hasn't kicked off as well as hoped? What sort of pitfalls have startups in the space encountered that you know about? 12:51 - What do you think is the best way to create impact/maximize potential impact on the world for a high school student developer? 15:45 - How did Sam go about finding what he and the world values? 19:30 - With VR/AR on the rise, how do you think it's going to impact the startup community? 22:02 - How do you know if you're technical enough to build great products? 22:49 - If you were an important but non-founder employee at a startup and your company were to be acquired, how would you approach the process of integrating and insuring success between the companies? And how would you evaluate the acquiring company to decide if it's worth staying?
During Startup School two companies went on stage to pitch Paul Buchheit. Sam Altman followed each founder and repitched their startup to Paul. The two startups were: Shipamax [https://www.shipamax.com/] - Jenna Brown Shipamax helps companies hire ships. MyPurpleFolder [http://www.mypurplefolder.com/] - Kelli Thomas-Drake MyPurpleFolder helps patients and caregivers keep track of their medical records.
Access podcast and transcript versions of this interview here: https://www.ycombinator.com/future/sam Chapters (Powered by https://bit.ly/chapterme-yc) - 00:00 - Intro 00:14 - How to Pick What's Important to Work On 01:06 - Finding Your Tribe: Advice on selecting who you are working with 02:52 - How to accomplish big things? 03:40 - Work life balance in your 20's 05:26 - How to Make a Decision About When to Give Up 07:29 - What's the source of motivation for people? 08:36 - Have you noticed the change in what motivates you? 09:10 - Burnout vs Momentum 10:20 - Taking risks and how should people think about it differently 12:50 - Asking what you want and being aggressive 14:39 - Long term willingness to hold on to things 17:22 - Have You Got a Strong Opinion About Things? Or Just Iterating 17:41 - Strong opinion and be flexible at the details 19:55 - Advice for young people 21:06 - Outro
Sam Altman, President of Y Combinator, shares his thoughts on how you can succeed with a startup. Startup School is YC's free online program for founders. Sign up to access the full curriculum and over $100k in deals! https://www.startupschool.org/ Chapters (Powered by https://bit.ly/chapterme-yc) - 00:00:00 Introduction 00:00:11 A product so good people tell friends 00:00:53 Easy to understand 00:01:13 Exponential growth in market 00:02:00 Real trends vs Fake trends 00:03:30 Evangelical founder 00:04:04 Ambitious vision 00:04:22 Hard startup vs Easy Startup 00:05:34 Confident and definite view of future (but flexible!) 00:06:10 Huge if it works 00:06:30 Team (non-obvious insights) 00:07:20 - Optimists! 00:07:47 - Idea generators 00:08:16 - ‘We’ll figure it out’ 00:08:50 - ‘I’ve got it’ 00:09:08 - Action bias 00:09:34 - The blessing or inexperience 00:10:16 Momentum 00:11:04 Competitive advantage 00:11:46 Sensible business model 00:12:04 Distribution strategy 00:12:20 Traits of best founders - Frugality, focus, obsession, love 00:12:46 Why startups win 00:13:13 - One no vs One yes 00:14:06 - Fast-changing markets 00:14:43 - Platform shifts 00:15:46 End
Sam Altman - https://twitter.com/sama - expands on ideas that have come up in several of his essays. Specifically: choosing projects, creating value, and finding purpose. Sam’s the president of YC Group - https://ycombinator.com/ - and co-chairman of OpenAI - https://openai.com/ The YC podcast is hosted by Craig Cannon - https://twitter.com/craigcannon *** Topics :55 – From The Days Are Long But The Decades Are Short – Minimize your own cognitive load from distracting things that don’t really matter. It’s hard to overstate how important this is, and how bad most people are at it. http://blog.samaltman.com/the-days-are-long-but-the-decades-are-short 3:20 – Stepping back and evaluating your work 5:00 – Creating metrics for your projects 6:00 – Taking a year off 9:00 – Figuring out when to commit 11:00 – Poker 12:00 – From Productivity – Sleep seems to be the most important physical factor in productivity for me. Exercise is probably the second most important physical factor. The third area is nutrition. http://blog.samaltman.com/productivity 14:30 – From You and Your Research by Richard Hamming – If what you are doing is not important, and if you don’t think it is going to lead to something important, why are you at Bell Labs working on it?’ http://blog.samaltman.com/you-and-your-research 16:00 – From The Days Are Long But The Decades Are Short – Things in life are rarely as risky as they seem. Most people are too risk-averse, and so most advice is biased too much towards conservative paths. http://blog.samaltman.com/the-days-are-long-but-the-decades-are-short 17:00 – Perspective shifts 19:45 – From Productivity – My system has three key pillars: “Make sure to get the important shit done”, “Don’t waste time on stupid shit”, and “make a lot of lists”. http://blog.samaltman.com/productivity 22:00 – What Happened to Innovation http://blog.samaltman.com/what-happened-to-innovation-1 24:20 – From You and Your Research by Richard Hamming – He who works with the door open gets all kinds of interruptions, but he also occasionally gets clues as to what the world is and what might be important. http://blog.samaltman.com/you-and-your-research 26:20 – The deferred life plan doesn’t work 31:20 – From The Merge – Our self-worth is so based on our intelligence that we believe it must be singular and not slightly higher than all the other animals on a continuum. Perhaps the AI will feel the same way and note that differences between us and bonobos are barely worth discussing. http://blog.samaltman.com/the-merge 33:40 – Weight training 35:00 – The Way to Love by Anthony de Mello https://www.amazon.com/Way-Love-Meditations-Anthony-Classics/dp/038524939X
Sam Altman has led OpenAI from its founding as a research nonprofit in 2015 to becoming the most valuable startup in the world ten years later. In this episode, a16z Cofounder Ben Horowitz and General Partner Erik Torenberg sit down with Sam to discuss the core thesis behind OpenAI’s disparate bets, why they released Sora, how they use models internally, the best AI evals, and where we’re going from here. Timecodes: 0:00 Introduction 0:41 OpenAI’s Vision and Infrastructure 2:37 Business Model and Vertical Integration 5:08 AGI, Sora, and Societal Co-evolution 8:01 The Future of AI Interfaces 9:12 AI Scientists and Scientific Progress 11:44 Reflections on Progress and Model Capabilities 16:17 Sam's Experience as CEO & Leadership Lessons 17:34 Strategic Partnerships and Scaling Infrastructure 25:05 Regulation, Safety, and Societal Impact 28:33 Copyright, Open Source, and Content Creation 33:15 Energy, Policy, and AI’s Resource Needs 37:07 Monetization and User Behavior 43:03 The Talent War and Personal Reflections 45:20 Advice for Founders Resources: Follow Sam on X: https://x.com/sama Follow OpenAI on X: https://x.com/openai Learn more about OpenAI: https://openai.com/ Try Sora: https://sora.com/ Follow Ben on X: https://x.com/bhorowitz Stay Updated: If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to like, subscribe, and share with your friends! Find a16z on X: https://x.com/a16z Find a16z on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/a16z Listen to the a16z Podcast on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5bC65RDvs3oxnLyqqvkUYX Listen to the a16z Podcast on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/a16z-podcast/id842818711 Follow our host: https://x.com/eriktorenberg Please note that the content here is for informational purposes only; should NOT be taken as legal, business, tax, or investment advice or be used to evaluate any investment or security; and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any a16z fund. a16z and its affiliates may maintain investments in the companies discussed. For more details, please see a16z.com/disclosures.
Sam Altman is the CEO of OpenAI, the company behind GPT-4, ChatGPT, DALL-E, Codex, and many other state-of-the-art AI technologies. Please support this podcast by checking out our sponsors: - NetSuite: http://netsuite.com/lex to get free product tour - SimpliSafe: https://simplisafe.com/lex - ExpressVPN: https://expressvpn.com/lexpod to get 3 months free EPISODE LINKS: Sam's Twitter: https://twitter.com/sama OpenAI's Twitter: https://twitter.com/OpenAI OpenAI's Website: https://openai.com GPT-4 Website: https://openai.com/research/gpt-4 PODCAST INFO: Podcast website: https://lexfridman.com/podcast Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/2lwqZIr Spotify: https://spoti.fi/2nEwCF8 RSS: https://lexfridman.com/feed/podcast/ Full episodes playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrAXtmErZgOdP_8GztsuKi9nrraNbKKp4 Clips playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrAXtmErZgOeciFP3CBCIEElOJeitOr41 OUTLINE: 0:00 - Introduction 4:36 - GPT-4 16:02 - Political bias 23:03 - AI safety 43:43 - Neural network size 47:36 - AGI 1:09:05 - Fear 1:11:14 - Competition 1:13:33 - From non-profit to capped-profit 1:16:54 - Power 1:22:06 - Elon Musk 1:30:32 - Political pressure 1:48:46 - Truth and misinformation 2:01:09 - Microsoft 2:05:09 - SVB bank collapse 2:10:00 - Anthropomorphism 2:14:03 - Future applications 2:17:54 - Advice for young people 2:20:33 - Meaning of life SOCIAL: - Twitter: https://twitter.com/lexfridman - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lexfridman - Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lexfridman - Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lexfridman - Medium: https://medium.com/@lexfridman - Reddit: https://reddit.com/r/lexfridman - Support on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/lexfridman
You know him as the CEO of OpenAI — but did you know that Sam Altman is an avid writer? As one of today’s most successful entrepreneurs, Sam champions the tremendous value of writing: how it clarifies your thinking, expands your ideas, and levels-up your life in every sense, both personally and professionally. Plus, he has a love for the creative. (Have you ever met someone who can recite Percy Bysshe Shelley poems from memory? Well, Sam can.) In this episode, we discuss how Sam uses ChatGPT in his daily life; how LLMs are changing the future of writing; what it means to be a novelist in the age of technology; and Sam’s best-learned writing lessons from Paul Graham. If you want to learn how the king of ChatGPT writes, this episode is for you. SPEAKER LINKS: Website: https://openai.com/ Blog: https://blog.samaltman.com/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/sama WRITE OF PASSAGE: Want to learn more about the final class for Write of Passage? https://writeofpassage.com/ PODCAST LINKS: Website: https://writeofpassage.com/how-i-write Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/how-i-write/id1700171470 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2DjMSboniFAeGA8v9NpoPv TIMESTAMPS: 00:00:00 Introduction 00:01:36 Will LLMs change how we write? 00:03:22 Human-computer interaction 00:08:39 How does Sam use ChatGPT? 00:11:26 How Sam shed his anxiety 00:13:00 How clear thinking leads to clear communication 00:17:24 Sam once dreamed of being a novelist 00:18:37 What Peter Thiel taught Sam about thinking 00:21:35 What Paul Graham taught Sam about writing 00:24:00 How much of Sam’s writing comes from conversation 00:26:02 The book Sam Altman wants to write 00:28:37 Sam’s Advice for Founders and Y-Combinator Applications 00:30:20 How Y-Combinator Influences OpenAI 00:30:43 What Excites Sam About Writing with ChatGPT 00:33:45 How Sam Decides What to Work On 00:35:55 How Sam chose to work on AGI 00:37:35 Writing strategy memos at OpenAI 00:38:38 The skill you need in the age of AI 00:39:53 Does writing education need to change? 00:41:34 Why isn’t ChatGPT a better storyteller? 00:44:20 Sam’s obsessive note-taking method 00:46:06 The Future of Writing in an AI World 00:47:12 Will AI put writers out of work? ABOUT THE HOST: I’m David Perell and I’m a writer, teacher, and podcaster. I believe writing online is one of the biggest opportunities in the world today. For the first time in human history, everybody can freely share their ideas with a global audience. I seek to help as many people publish their writing online as possible. How I Write is a podcast by Write of Passage // Produced by Adam Soccolich
Sam Altman is the CEO of OpenAI, the company behind GPT-4, ChatGPT, Sora, and many other state-of-the-art AI technologies. Please support this podcast by checking out our sponsors: - Cloaked: https://cloaked.com/lex and use code LexPod to get 25% off - Shopify: https://shopify.com/lex to get $1 per month trial - BetterHelp: https://betterhelp.com/lex to get 10% off - ExpressVPN: https://expressvpn.com/lexpod to get 3 months free TRANSCRIPT: https://lexfridman.com/sam-altman-2-transcript EPISODE LINKS: Sam's X: https://x.com/sama Sam's Blog: https://blog.samaltman.com/ OpenAI's X: https://x.com/OpenAI OpenAI's Website: https://openai.com ChatGPT Website: https://chat.openai.com/ Sora Website: https://openai.com/sora GPT-4 Website: https://openai.com/research/gpt-4 PODCAST INFO: Podcast website: https://lexfridman.com/podcast Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/2lwqZIr Spotify: https://spoti.fi/2nEwCF8 RSS: https://lexfridman.com/feed/podcast/ Full episodes playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrAXtmErZgOdP_8GztsuKi9nrraNbKKp4 Clips playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrAXtmErZgOeciFP3CBCIEElOJeitOr41 OUTLINE: 0:00 - Introduction 1:05 - OpenAI board saga 18:31 - Ilya Sutskever 24:40 - Elon Musk lawsuit 34:32 - Sora 44:23 - GPT-4 55:32 - Memory & privacy 1:02:36 - Q* 1:06:12 - GPT-5 1:09:27 - $7 trillion of compute 1:17:35 - Google and Gemini 1:28:40 - Leap to GPT-5 1:32:24 - AGI 1:50:57 - Aliens SOCIAL: - Twitter: https://twitter.com/lexfridman - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lexfridman - Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lexfridman - Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lexfridman - Medium: https://medium.com/@lexfridman - Reddit: https://reddit.com/r/lexfridman - Support on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/lexfridman
Startup Investor School is a free, 4-day course designed to educate early stage investors interested in investing in startups. We'll cover the fundamentals of investing, from investing instruments to legal and accounting basics to evaluating startups and managing deal flow. Our hope is that more people, from a wide range of backgrounds will consider investing in startups and that those who do will be better at it. Learn more at https://investor.startupschool.org/
Sam answers questions submitted on Whale. You can download the app here: http://apple.co/2jV1WrB --- 0:03 - What's the best thing you learned from Paul Graham? 0:18 - Out of all the founders that have manbuns, who is your favorite? 0:31 - What social problems would you like to see startups tackling in 2017? 0:50 - Advice for a high school senior interested in tech startups but bored out of their mind at school? Asking for a friend. 1:06 - What's your favorite play? I personally revere Hamlet. 1:20 - What are the top 3 emotions you felt in the last week? Is this consistent with most weeks? Do you actively cultivate/influence the emotions you feel? 2:02 - What's the 10 year goal for Y Combinator? And can you explain what value you think the YC network will bring over the same period? 2:21 - I heard once that you keep your to-do list on pen & paper. Why analog? 2:37 - What do you think about new startups copying the idea of existing startups? 2:53 - Have you ever taken nutritional supplements to boost your performance at work? If so which ones, did they work, and do you see this becoming a trend in Silicon Valley? 3:13 - Could you please tell us more about how YC is supporting ACLU? (Amazing news btw, thank you Sam!) 3:33 - What books do you recommend on learning machine learning? 3:49 - What should the world know about Y Combinator's Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) launching in 2017? 4:06 - Hi Sam! You seem to have a great answer to every question! What difficult question or issue are you yourself trying to figure out at the moment? Not counting Trump. 4:27 - After lots of hard work and some small customers, we're finally in talks with an ideal, very large fashion brand! Yay! What are your tips and hacks for enterprise sales? Esp. to cut sales cycle length 4:48 - What do you think of YC for small businesses? That'd really help US economy 5:09 - We are a european journalism startup looking into mass media solutions. Would you be able to help set up a U.S. company even before acceptance to YC? We want to save us the hassle of converting. 5:24 - What's the most # of times YC rejected someone's application before accepting them? 5:54 - What is your favorite Paul Graham essay and why? 6:12 - If mediocre engineers don't build great companies, how can current engineering students become the best engineers? 6:31 - How will you leverage your relationship with Peter Thiel to push back against harmful/dangerous policies of the Trump administration? And if you don't plan to leverage that relationship, why?
A fireside with Sam Altman on June 16, 2025 at AI Startup School in San Francisco. Sam Altman grew up obsessed with technology, broke into the Stanford mainframe as a kid, and dropped out to start his first company before turning 20. In this conversation, he traces the path from early startup struggles to building OpenAI—sharing what he’s learned about ambition, the weight of responsibility, and how to keep building when the whole world is watching. He opens up about the hardest moments of his career, the limits of personal productivity, and why, in the end, it's all still about finding people you like working with and doing something that matters. Apply to Y Combinator: https://ycombinator.com/apply Work at a startup: https://workatastartup.com Chapters: 00:00 – We’re going for AGI 01:25 – Founding OpenAI Against the Odds 05:00 – GPT-4o & the Future of Reasoning Models 07:00 – ChatGPT Memory & the ‘Her’ Vision 10:00 – GPT-5 & the Vision of a Multimodal Supermodel 11:00 – Robots at Scale 15:00 – Don’t Build ChatGPT — Build What’s Missing 17:00 – Elon’s Harsh Email & Building Conviction 26:00 – One Person’s Leverage in the Next Decade 32:00 – AI for Science: Sam’s Personal Bet
How to Start a Startup is a series of video lectures, initially given at Stanford in Fall 2014. Lecture Transcript: http://www.tech.genius.com/Sam-altman-lecture-2-ideas-products-teams-and-execution-part-ii-annotated Sam Altman finishes up "Ideas, Products, Teams and Execution" by covering Team and Execution, in Lecture 2 of How to Start a Startup. See the slides and readings at http://www.startupclass.samaltman.com/courses/lec02 Discuss this lecture: http://www.startupclass.co/courses/how-to-start-a-startup/lectures/64031
Earlier this month, OpenAI raised the largest venture round ever at $6.6 billion. The company’s CFO says AI is now at the point where orders of magnitude matter and the next generation of models will be capital intensive. In this episode of the Lightcone, the hosts consider what a world with ultra intelligent models would look like and what potential unlocks could be made possible. Apply to Y Combinator: https://ycombinator.com/apply Chapters (Powered by https://bit.ly/chapterme-yc) - 0:00 Coming Up 0:54 What models get unlocked with the biggest venture round ever? 5:35 Some discoveries take a long time to actually be felt by regular people 9:53 Distillation may be how most of us benefit 14:26 o1 making previously impossible things possible 21:17 The new Googles 23:47 o1 makes the GPU needs even bigger 25:44 Voice apps are fast growing 27:05 Incumbents aren’t taking these innovations seriously 31:52 Ten trillion parameters 33:15 Outro
Reid Hoffman - https://twitter.com/reidhoffman - interviews Sam Altman - https://twitter.com/sama - in this uncut interview from the Masters of Scale podcast - https://mastersofscale.com
At a recent event, a founder asked Sam Altman "If you were 24 and starting a startup today, what would you build?" His answer: A vertical AI agent. Apply to YC Winter 2025 at https://ycombinator.com/apply.
OpenAI’s newest model, o1, makes huge leaps forward in domains like mathematics and coding and scores big on many of the toughest benchmarks. The secret to its success? It represents an entirely new class of models designed to reason or “think through” complex problems. For the very first episode of YC Decoded, we took a look inside. Chapters (Powered by https://bit.ly/chapterme-yc) - 00:00 - Intro 00:30 - o1 preview and o1 mini 01:40 - Chain of Thought reasoning. 03:50 - Reasoning 05:05 - o1 preview 05:56 - Is o1 actually reasoning? 06:26 - o1 still makes errors.
There's an ongoing debate about whether AI scaling laws will hold or hit a wall in the near future. However, what's clear now is today's models already have the power to increase productivity in ways that would have been unimaginable just a few years ago. In this episode of the Lightcone, we dig into the results of a recent o1 hackathon hosted by YC to find out what can be unlocked when founders leverage a SOTA reasoning model. Chapters (Powered by https://bit.ly/chapterme-yc) - 0:00 Intro 1:15 The intelligence age 4:18 YC o1 hackathon 12:09 4 orders of magnitude 14:42 The architecture of o1 21:52 Getting that final 10-15% of accuracy 32:06 The companies/ideas that should pivot because of o1 34:44 Outro
Learn more at https://workatastartup.com/expo Keynote talks from Sam Altman (President of Y Combinator) and Justin Kan (founder of Twitch and Atrium). Rapid-fire pitches from YC startups.