In 2015 a young executive named Greg Brockman arrived at a hotel in Silicon Valley. He was going to a dinner. and So this was at the Rosewood in Palo Alto.

A very nice, very nice view of, you know,

kind of the rolling hills and you can,

you know, you can see the interstate in the distance.

Always love a view of an interstate.

Despite its proximity to the interstate,

the Rosewood is a classy place.

It calls itself an urban retreat.

And a strip steak in the hotel restaurant will set you back 70 bucks.

It's a place where tech types and investors hatch plans and cut deals.

That was the kind of dinner Greg was headed to.

You know, I was like, tenish people, something like that, and I actually showed up a little bit late,

and I felt very bad because I felt like I kind of missed all the good stuff.

But fortunately, the opposite was true.

I think the good stuff was about to begin.

Around the table were a mix of startup people and AI researchers.

Greg, for example, had been an executive at Stripe, the Payments Company.

Sam Altman was also there. He was the president of Y

combinator, the famous startup accelerator. And on the AI side, there was Ilia

Sutzkavir, a top machine learning researcher.

And as you might expect, given the guest list, it wasn't your average dinner conversation.

They were talking about something kind of sci-fi sounding, AGI.

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