OpenAI President Greg Brockman on Doing Business in the Wake of Hugging Face

Joe Weisenthal (0:03)

Hello, Odd Lots listeners, I'm Joe Weisenthal.

Tracy Alloway (0:06)

And I'm Tracy Alloway.

Joe Weisenthal (0:07)

We're the hosts of the Odd Lots podcast, and we've got something exciting for you.

Tracy Alloway (0:11)

That's right. So one of the best parts of hosting our podcast is we get to actually meet and interact with our listeners. And we know we have some listeners over in Los Angeles.

Joe Weisenthal (0:21)

That's right. So if you're in LA, we're going to be recording a live show, some live recordings at the Vermont Theatre in Hollywood on September 17th.

Tracy Alloway (0:30)

We have some really exciting guests lined up, have some really great conversations planned. So go ahead and get your tickets. You can find those over at bloomberg.com/oddlots or click the link below in the show notes and come and say hi when you're there.

SPEAKER_3 (0:49)

Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio, news.

Joe Weisenthal (1:05)

Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots podcast. I'm Joe Weisenthal.

Tracy Alloway (1:10)

And I'm Tracy Alloway.

Joe Weisenthal (1:11)

Tracy, I don't know if I've ever said it. On the podcast, we've talked a bit about my vibe coding adventures, etc.

No, you've never said it before, Joe. No, no, that I've said. You know, I recently switched from Cloud Code to Codex.

Tracy Alloway (1:25)

This is big news.

Joe Weisenthal (1:26)

It is kind of big news, I think.

Tracy Alloway (1:29)

Also, bold of you to declare your allegiance to the public on the podcast.

Joe Weisenthal (1:34)

Well, you know, I don't have allegiance. And you know what, it could switch again the way, like, you know, I guess one of the sub stories of AI is like how easy it is to switch from time to time, from one model to another. So maybe it's revealing and talks about some of the challenges of these businesses that it was so easy.

I found that cloud speak, you know, that I found it like a little bit hard to work with. I'm not capable enough to like understand like advanced engineering practices or like migrating a codebase from like, you know, translating business into rust or whatever. So the fact, I don't know, I find like OpenAI to be like the pros to be clear and therefore to work with as like a completely non-technical person such as myself.

Tracy Alloway (2:17)

That's really interesting. I mean, one thing you said, it's hard to keep up with the models, right? And whatever you're using today might not be the one that you're using in a week from now. And at the same time, everyone is talking about how fast the development is going and all the risks that it poses, right?

Joe Weisenthal (2:35)

Yes. And we're recording this September 10th. It felt like something broke through in the last couple of days where suddenly everyone is very keyed on risks. The one thing with Codex, and I guess called Code, is now every once in a while it will get this pop up and it will say, the agent needs to connect to the internet in order to do this task and have to give it a permission. And normally I'm just like click, click, click, click, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. And I still do that. Why is there? And I still just click yes, yes, yes. But it makes you think about like.

Tracy Alloway (3:06)

You think for a second before you click.

Joe Weisenthal (3:09)

I think for one second. Yeah, about more than click. And we were in Jackson Hole a couple of weeks ago. And that's of course when the meter report broke about the OpenAI Hugging Face attack. And I think since then, anxiety about rogue AI, whatever you want to call it, has clearly snowballed.

And it feels like it's really getting bigger and bigger. And it's already been an industry that's been shot through with risk and anxiety. And now the sort of one thing that for many people in AI has been something they've talked about for 20 plus years before there was an AI industry to speak of, this idea of like misaligned quote rogue models is starting to become top of mind.

Tracy Alloway (3:50)

A reality. So this is our chance to ask a person directly involved in AI development about their respective, I guess, anxiety.

Joe Weisenthal (3:59)

Yeah, and what can be done about that? Anyway, we literally have the perfect guest today. We're going to be speaking, of course, with Greg Brockman. He is the co-founder and president of OpenAI here with us in studio. So, Greg, thank you so much for coming on Odd Lots.