The Power and Responsibility of Sam Altman

**Sam Altman** (0:00)
I thought a lot about what I would feel about the world my future kids would grow up in. Like, my highest order bit is to not destroy the world with AI. Like, it doesn't matter how good everything else is if we do that.

**Laurie Segall** (0:12)
Today, I want to take you to the home of Sam Altman. He's the CEO of OpenAI. Now, when I traveled there, I was struck by how green everything was. There were rolling hills and birds chirping in the background. And as we were driving in, there were cows grazing by the road. And I paint this picture because I think it's a really interesting backdrop for a conversation on the tech revolution. And before I interviewed Sam, who is a founder that I've interviewed for the last 15 years, my team sat down with me. When I told people I was going to come interview him, it was, there was such a visceral reaction. It's either people were so amazing, that's so cool, or, man, like, that is so terrifying. Tell them not to do this and tell them not to do this. Everyone cares. Everyone seems to care about artificial intelligence and there's a good reason why, and that's because it's going to impact every single one of us. It's going to impact your children, it's going to impact your parents, it's going to impact you, it's going to impact everyone. I think the reason for all of that is because this company that he's the CEO of is now one of the most important companies in the world. The technology that's built at OpenAI will impact every facet of our lives. There's a lot of fear around that, there's a lot of hope, but it's really this uncomfortable period that we're in. I think Sam Altman very much represents what happens when we're going through a technological revolution. There are a lot of questions because it feels really high stakes. The now of this feels really important because I want to go see the person that I've known for 15 years and look at who that person was and how that person is going to stand in this moment.
Sam, how long have we known each other?

**Sam Altman** (2:00)
Almost 20 years.

**Laurie Segall** (2:01)
We've known each other a really long time. I'm excited to sit down with you at this moment because I sat down with you throughout your career and I've seen all sorts of iterations of it. I would argue this is the most important seat you have sat in.

**Sam Altman** (2:15)
For sure.

**Laurie Segall** (2:16)
The stakes feel really high. We are in this moment where we're wondering if this technological innovation is going to be incredible for all of us or incredible for some of us. Do you feel that?

**Sam Altman** (2:29)
Yeah. I mean, we are clearly entering the phase where AI is going to be one of the high order bits of how our future society gets shaped. And I think people feel all of the excitement, fear, anxiety, hope, nervousness all at once.

**Laurie Segall** (2:47)
I'd love to go back to when I met you in 2010 This is long before the release of ChatGBT and AI's integration into the world. I remember I was just a cub reporter and I was obsessed with this thing called startups that people weren't really talking too much about. It wasn't normal to get into a stranger's car. That's Uber, by the way, or sleep in a stranger's home. That's Airbnb.
It was just this really interesting moment where the iPhone had come out, the App Store had launched, and you could have this idea, and you could code it into the hands of millions of people. It didn't feel like tech feels today. It felt anti-establishment. It felt a little bit punk rock. I just want to ground this, and I met you at that moment. I met you on a random bench to put you on camera for the first time. You had a geolocation app called Looped. And it was a moment in time. You didn't have a massive company. You didn't have PR people. It was just, you know, you, I assume, like a handful of folks building out this thing that you thought could be the future. Tell me how you would describe yourself then and that moment in time before we get to this moment now, which is just so incredibly different.

**Sam Altman** (4:08)
The world had really changed. You could make mobile apps a whole new kind of startup potential had unleashed itself. And it did feel kind of like punk rock is a nice way of saying it, but like chaotic, unorganized, unprofessional, like most of us didn't really know what we were doing. And, you know, now it's been more systematized and startups feel very different and they raise a ton of money right away and they grow really fast and there's like a playbook that's been figured out. But it almost felt like that was like the pre-paradigm stage.