20VC: Sam Altman on The Trajectory of Model Capability Improvements: Will Scaling Laws Continue | Semi-Conductor Supply Chains | What Startups Will be Steamrolled by OpenAI and Where is Opportunity

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The Twenty Minute VC

Finance, Venturecapital, Tech News, News, Siliconvalley, Technology, Investing, Startups, Business

4.4 • 637 Ratings

🗓️ 4 November 2024

⏱️ 40 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Sam Altman is the CEO of OpenAI, one of the most important companies in history. OpenAI is on a mission to ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity. Prior to OpenAI, Sam was the President of Y Combinator and an angel investor in Stripe, Airbnb, Reddit and Instacart.

15 Questions with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman:

1. Will the trajectory of model capability improvement keep going at the same rate as it has been?

2. When did Sam doubt the continuance of scaling laws most? What has been the hardest technical research challenge OpenAI have overcome?

3. How worried is Sam about semiconductor supply chains and international tensions around them?

4. What is Sam’s biggest worry today? How has it changed over the last 12 months and 5 years?

5. In what ways does Sam feel he was and is unprepared for the role of CEO of OpenAI?

6. Was Masa Son right to suggest that $9TRN of value will be created every year by AI?

7. Why does Sam disagree with Larry Ellison’s statement that it will cost $100BN to enter the foundation model race?

8. Was Keith Rabois right that the best way to build companies is to hire under 30s?

9. What unmade decision weighs on Sam’s mind most often?

10. What is Sam most grateful to Y Combinator for?

11. What would Sam build if he were a 23 year old starting today with the foundational AI technology that is already in place?

12. What should startups not try and build as OpenAI will steamroll them? What should they try and build where OpenAI will not go?

13. What does Sam believe is the most exciting use of agents that he has not seen created yet?

14. How does Sam believe that human potential is most wasted today?

15. Who does Sam most respect in the world of AI today? Why them?

Transcript

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0:00.0	We are going to try our hardest and believe we will succeed at making our models better and better and better.
0:05.6	If you are building a business that patches some current small shortcomings, if we do our job right, that will not be as important in the future.
0:14.7	We believe that we are on a pretty, a quite steep trajectory of improvement and that the current shortcomings of
0:22.5	the models today will just be taken care of by future generations. I encourage people to be aligned with
0:27.4	that. This is 20 VC with me, Harry Stebbings, and what a discussion we have for you today. I was very
0:32.6	honored to be asked to interview Sam Altman at OpenAI's Dev Day in London, and our episode today is the exclusive
0:39.0	of that discussion. For those that have been living under a rock, Sam Altman is the CEO of Open
0:44.3	AI, one of the most important companies in history. Open AI is on a mission to ensure that
0:50.1	artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity. Prior to Open AI, Sam was the president
0:55.8	of Y Combinator and an angel investor in Stripe, Airbnb, Reddit and Instacart. If you're inspired
1:02.4	by his insights, you'll love the Sam Altman book summary collection on the Blinkist app. With Blinkist,
1:08.2	you can access first-class summaries of his favorite books and seven and a
1:12.7	half thousand more to read and to listen to in just 15 minutes. Just to mention some, zero to one by
1:19.5	Peter Thiel or The Beginning of Infinity by David Deutsche. Being recommended by the New York Times
1:25.2	and Apple CEO Tim Cook, it's no surprise, 82% of Blinkist users see themselves as self-optimizers and 65% say it's essential for business and career growth.
1:37.3	And speaking of growth, over 32 million users have been empowered by Blinkist since 2012.
1:44.3	As a 20 VC listener, hey, you get a 25% discount on Blinkist.
1:49.1	That's B-L-I-N-K-I-T.
1:53.0	Just visit Blinkist.com forward slash 20VC to claim your discount and transform the way you learn.
2:00.2	And while you're optimizing your learning, let's also optimize your finances with Brex,
2:05.0	the financial stack founders can bank on.
2:07.7	Brex knows that nearly 40% of startups fail because they run out of cash.
	...

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