Sam Altman at TED today
OpenAI’s user base doubled in just the past few weeks (an accidental disclosure on stage). “10% of the world now uses our systems a lot.”
Reflecting on the life ahead for his newborn: “My kids will never be smarter than AI.”
Reaction to DeepSeek:
“We had a meeting last night on our open source policy. We are going to do a powerful open-source model near the frontier. We were late to act, but we are going to do really well now.”
Regarding the accumulated knowledge OpenAI gains from its usage history: “The upload happens bit by bit. It is an extension of yourself, and a companion, and soon will proactively push things to you.”
Have there been any scary moments?
“No. There have been moments of awe. And questions of how far this will go. But we are not sitting on a conscious model capable of self-improvement.”
How do you define AGI?
“If you ask 10 OpenAI engineers, you will get 14 different definitions. Whichever you choose, it is clear that we will go way past that. They are points along an unbelievable exponential curve.”
“Agentic AI is the most interesting and consequential safety problem we have faced. It has much higher stakes. People want to use agents they can trust.”
When asked about his Congressional testimony calling for a new agency to issue licenses for large model builders: “I have since learned more about how government works, and I no longer think this is the right framework.”:
“Having a kid changed a lot of things in me. It has been the most amazing thing ever. Paraphrasing my co-founder Ilya, I don’t know what the meaning of life is, but I am sure it has something to do with babies.”
“We made a change recently. With our new image model, we are much less restrictive on speech harms. We had hard guardrails before, and we have taken a much more permissive stance. We heard the feedback that people don’t want censorship, and that is a fair safety discussion to have.”
When asked how many users they have: “Last we disclosed, we have 500 million weekly active users, growing fast.”
Chris Anderson: “But backstage, you told me that it doubled in just a few weeks.”
@SamA: “I said that privately.”
And that’s how we got the update.
OpenAI’s user base doubled in just the past few weeks (an accidental disclosure on stage). “10% of the world now uses our systems a lot.”
Reflecting on the life ahead for his newborn: “My kids will never be smarter than AI.”
Reaction to DeepSeek:
“We had a meeting last night on our open source policy. We are going to do a powerful open-source model near the frontier. We were late to act, but we are going to do really well now.”
Regarding the accumulated knowledge OpenAI gains from its usage history: “The upload happens bit by bit. It is an extension of yourself, and a companion, and soon will proactively push things to you.”
Have there been any scary moments?
“No. There have been moments of awe. And questions of how far this will go. But we are not sitting on a conscious model capable of self-improvement.”
How do you define AGI?
“If you ask 10 OpenAI engineers, you will get 14 different definitions. Whichever you choose, it is clear that we will go way past that. They are points along an unbelievable exponential curve.”
“Agentic AI is the most interesting and consequential safety problem we have faced. It has much higher stakes. People want to use agents they can trust.”
When asked about his Congressional testimony calling for a new agency to issue licenses for large model builders: “I have since learned more about how government works, and I no longer think this is the right framework.”:
“Having a kid changed a lot of things in me. It has been the most amazing thing ever. Paraphrasing my co-founder Ilya, I don’t know what the meaning of life is, but I am sure it has something to do with babies.”
“We made a change recently. With our new image model, we are much less restrictive on speech harms. We had hard guardrails before, and we have taken a much more permissive stance. We heard the feedback that people don’t want censorship, and that is a fair safety discussion to have.”
When asked how many users they have: “Last we disclosed, we have 500 million weekly active users, growing fast.”
Chris Anderson: “But backstage, you told me that it doubled in just a few weeks.”
@SamA: “I said that privately.”
And that’s how we got the update.
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