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What Next: TBD | Tech, power, and the future - Why OpenAI Bought a Talk Show

Slate Daily Feed

Slate

News, Business, Society & Culture

3.91.1K Ratings

🗓️ 10 April 2026

⏱️ 21 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

As OpenAI prepares for its IPO, the company decided to…pay millions of dollars for a tech talk show? Is this just what rich tech guys like Sam Altman are like now? 


Guest: Mike Isaac, tech reporter for the New York Times.

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Podcast production by Evan Campbell, and Patrick Fort.


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Transcript

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0:00.0

We have our first guest to the show.

0:06.7

Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI.

0:09.0

He's in the Restream Waiting Room.

0:10.0

Welcome to the show.

0:10.6

Sam, how are you doing?

0:11.4

Welcome back.

0:12.0

Good.

0:12.2

Thank you guys for having me back.

0:13.3

Back in February, Sam Altman went on a little streaming show called TBPN to chat about

0:19.9

his company, its models, and generally chop

0:22.5

things up with the hosts.

0:24.4

Would you launch?

0:25.4

So we launched 5.3 Codex is, I think, the best coding model in the world.

0:29.2

We took a lot of the feedback that people had about 5.2, 5.2 codex and got it into one model.

0:34.8

It is much smarter at programming, but it's also way faster.

0:38.1

You can interact with it mid-turn.

0:39.7

I think it's got a much better personality.

0:44.0

For someone like me with a hard news background,

0:46.9

I'd call this a pretty friendly interview.

0:49.5

I mean, I think it was probably pretty typical

0:52.7

of a lot of TBPN interviews.

0:56.0

That's Mike Isaac. He covers tech for the New York Times.

...

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