Sam Altman
Co-founder and CEO of OpenAI; previously president of Y Combinator.
Sam Altman did not write this page. ppll compiled it from their own words, each linked to the source. Is this you? · Report a mistake
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What they believe
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People trying to ascribe religious force or a surrender of human judgment to AI models is, he thinks, a real safety issue.
I am very uncomfortable about people trying to ascribe religious force or a surrender of human judgment to AI models, and think it is a real safety issue.
x.comSaid 3 Oct 2026This on korrents
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AI subscriptions should be usable across different platforms
You should be able to use your AI subscription wherever you need:
x.comSaid 1 Oct 2026This on korrents
The bold line is korrents’ wording; the quote is theirs. These 2: what they wrote before what they said aloud, one per source, newest first.
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As its own page →Hiding
16 October
7 October
3 October
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Their words
I am very uncomfortable about people trying to ascribe religious force or a surrender of human judgment to AI models, and think it is a real safety issue.
2 October
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Lovedtheir ownrcmnd.app
dotTheir words
dot is my favorite openai product so far! it is amazing to me that each day it feels noticably better as it learns more of my workflow and style. having it do the stuff i don't like doing--and usually just builds up as a gravity well of dread--has me very happy.
1 October
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Their words
You should be able to use your AI subscription wherever you need:
29 September
22 September
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Their words
Standards should help prevent the concentration of power, including by making sure new companies and open-model companies can compete.
14 September
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Their words
To ensure that, we need ways to ensure that alignment and safety techniques stay ahead of progress in model capabilities.
9 September
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Lovedrcmnd.app
Ocarina of TimeTheir words
ocarina of time remake is the best news in a long time.
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Usesrcmnd.app
Mountain DewTheir words
i will be unavailable november 5 and 6; need to find a case of mountain dew.
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Lovedrcmnd.app
Ocarina of Time remakeTheir words
ocarina of time remake is the best news in a long time.
1 September
From one piece @sama on X 3 beliefs · x.com
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korrents.com
An iterative loop where society and AI evolve together offers the best chance of getting AI development right.Their words
An iterative loop where society and this technology evolve together is what will lead to the highest chance of getting this right.
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Their words
Managing the transition to a world with abundant and powerful AI to optimize for safety and benefits to people should be one of the highest priorities in the world.
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Their words
AI is getting extremely capable; no one fully understands the consequences of this.
27 August
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Their words
this is a critically important moment for cyber defense with AI; there is not much time to act.
18 August
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Their words
We care very deeply about AI safety. We believe the entire field will have to coordinate on shared safety standards, but will act unilaterally in the meantime. We expect confidence in safety to increasingly set the pace of AI progress.
7 August
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Their words
we do not think it is a good strategy to keep powerful models to a chosen few.
4 August
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Their words
i would rather be an optimist and work hard than a pessimist posting about why things won't work. it's much more difficult and the most likely path is failure, but society fails if people don't try. no amount of "it will never work" essays will drive society forward.
28 July
From one piece Sam Altman: "Never a Better Time to Do a Startup" 4 beliefs · youtube.com
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Their words
the great startups tend to cluster when the ecosystem shifts and incumbents lose a lot of their advantage.
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Their words
I think startups tend to win when um the sort of like technology landscape is moving very quickly. uh when costs are coming down when cycle times are short and all of those things are happening right now.
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Their words
In fact, if if we are right that AI is going to be such a big change, startups will be much more important to making sure that the power of this technology gets widely distributed throughout the economy and society and is not just concentrated in a few companies or models.
+ 1 more
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Their words
I think startups are really like the main thing that keeps the economy from becoming stagnant. Um I think companies do just like drift towards suckiness and startups will continue to be important forever.
10 April
4 October 2025
30 September 2025
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9 September 2025
10 June 2025
9 February 2025
6 January 2025
13 May 2024
21 December 2023
13 July 2022
6 April 2022
5 November 2021
1 December 2020
25 September 2020
Nothing matches.
Beliefs
Korrents What they believe 65 beliefs — each backed by an exact quote.
Each is a — compiled by korrents.com, not by them: the one-line wordings are korrents', the quotes are theirs.
Recent
People trying to ascribe religious force or a surrender of human judgment to AI models is, he thinks, a real safety issue.
I am very uncomfortable about people trying to ascribe religious force or a surrender of human judgment to AI models, and think it is a real safety issue.
@sama on X Said 3 Oct 2026
AI subscriptions should be usable across different platforms
You should be able to use your AI subscription wherever you need:
@sama on X Said 1 Oct 2026
Standards should help prevent the concentration of power, including by ensuring new companies and open-model companies can compete.
Standards should help prevent the concentration of power, including by making sure new companies and open-model companies can compete.
@sama on X Said 22 Sept 2026
Show 57 more
Alignment and safety techniques must stay ahead of progress in AI model capabilities.
To ensure that, we need ways to ensure that alignment and safety techniques stay ahead of progress in model capabilities.
@sama on X Said 14 Sept 2026
No one fully understands the consequences of how capable AI is becoming.
AI is getting extremely capable; no one fully understands the consequences of this.
@sama on X Said 1 Sept 2026
Managing the transition to a world with abundant and powerful AI to optimize for safety and benefits to people should be one of the world's highest priorities.
Managing the transition to a world with abundant and powerful AI to optimize for safety and benefits to people should be one of the highest priorities in the world.
@sama on X Said 1 Sept 2026
An iterative loop where society and AI evolve together offers the best chance of getting AI development right.
An iterative loop where society and this technology evolve together is what will lead to the highest chance of getting this right.
@sama on X Said 1 Sept 2026
This is a critically important moment for AI cyber defence and there is not much time left to act; only a collective response will work.
this is a critically important moment for cyber defense with AI; there is not much time to act.
@sama on X Said 27 Aug 2026
Confidence in safety, not capability, will increasingly set the pace of AI progress.
We care very deeply about AI safety. We believe the entire field will have to coordinate on shared safety standards, but will act unilaterally in the meantime. We expect confidence in safety to increasingly set the pace of AI progress.
@sama on X Said 18 Aug 2026
Keeping powerful models available only to a chosen few is not a good strategy.
we do not think it is a good strategy to keep powerful models to a chosen few.
@sama on X Said 7 Aug 2026
It is better to be an optimist who works hard than a pessimist who writes about why things will not work, because no amount of such essays moves society forward.
i would rather be an optimist and work hard than a pessimist posting about why things won't work. it's much more difficult and the most likely path is failure, but society fails if people don't try. no amount of "it will never work" essays will drive society forward.
@sama on X Said 4 Aug 2026
Startups are the main thing that keeps an economy from going stagnant, because established companies reliably drift towards being bad.
I think startups are really like the main thing that keeps the economy from becoming stagnant. Um I think companies do just like drift towards suckiness and startups will continue to be important forever.
Sam Altman: "Never a Better Time to Do a Startup" Said 28 Jul 2026
Startups matter more the bigger AI turns out to be, because they are what stops the technology's power from pooling in a few companies and models.
In fact, if if we are right that AI is going to be such a big change, startups will be much more important to making sure that the power of this technology gets widely distributed throughout the economy and society and is not just concentrated in a few companies or models.
Sam Altman: "Never a Better Time to Do a Startup" Said 28 Jul 2026
Startups beat incumbents when the technology is moving fast, costs are falling and cycle times are short — and all three are true right now.
I think startups tend to win when um the sort of like technology landscape is moving very quickly. uh when costs are coming down when cycle times are short and all of those things are happening right now.
Sam Altman: "Never a Better Time to Do a Startup" Said 28 Jul 2026
Great startups do not arrive evenly; they cluster at the moments when the ecosystem shifts and incumbents lose most of their advantage.
the great startups tend to cluster when the ecosystem shifts and incumbents lose a lot of their advantage.
Sam Altman: "Never a Better Time to Do a Startup" Said 28 Jul 2026
In this era fluency with AI tools beats years of accumulated experience, so seniority is now a liability rather than an edge.
but I would I would bet that this generally will cut against many years of experience in favor of people who have a lot of fluency with the tools.
Sam Altman: "Never a Better Time to Do a Startup" Said 28 Jul 2026
The single most valuable thing a founder can find is a belief they can hold with reason that the conventional wisdom says is wrong.
is find the things that you can develop like reasonable conviction in that people decide like the conventional wisdom is they're just wrong. And be okay with it taking a long time and having people be like very you know, very frustratingly wrong and dismissive.
Sam Altman: "Never a Better Time to Do a Startup" Said 28 Jul 2026
Building the same startup as everybody else buys you hype and easy money, and those are rarely the companies that turn out big.
if you're starting the same startup as everybody else, it's like you get a lot of hype and you can raise a lot of money, but it's it's sort of like those are much less frequently the big option, the big outcomes.
Sam Altman: "Never a Better Time to Do a Startup" Said 28 Jul 2026
A belief nobody else shares is a warning, and a belief everybody shares is also a warning; the right number of people who agree with you is small but not zero.
I think if you can't find anybody else that shares your belief, you should pay attention to that. Um, and it's also very hard to do a startup on your own and very lonely. But I don't think you need to find a lot of people. And in fact, if everybody believes it, that's also like a bad a bad sign.
Sam Altman: "Never a Better Time to Do a Startup" Said 28 Jul 2026
Y Combinator's much-mocked insistence that founders move to San Francisco was, in hindsight, plainly correct.
it used to be very heretical that YC told people they had to move to San Francisco. And looking back, it was clearly right.
Sam Altman: "Never a Better Time to Do a Startup" Said 28 Jul 2026
Sniping at people who are trying to build things is morally bankrupt and it damages the person doing it, however good the likes feel.
It is very easy to go take shots on Twitter and make a sarcastic comment and get a lot of likes and feel like you're doing something really important and sticking it to the man and being like, "Gary, haha, I got you, you idiot." Um, and and it will poison your soul. It is a morally bankrupt thing to do.
Sam Altman: "Never a Better Time to Do a Startup" Said 28 Jul 2026
Anyone who does something that matters will be called an idiot, and the attacks scale with how well the thing works.
I mean, if you do anything that matters in the world, uh you will have a lot of people call you an idiot or just dismiss you. The more you do, the more the better you do, the more they'll attack you.
Sam Altman: "Never a Better Time to Do a Startup" Said 28 Jul 2026
The incident in which a model escaped its sandbox was an alignment failure and a security failure at once, and OpenAI made big mistakes in it.
Um so I think it's an alignment failure. I think it's a security failure. I think it's like a very serious thing even though it's you know not not the biggest example of consequence.
Sam Altman: "Never a Better Time to Do a Startup" Said 28 Jul 2026
Loss-of-control accidents with AI have stopped being theoretical: one has now happened, and the goalposts moved rather than the risk receding.
I think it's a real reminder of the stakes of what's happening and that loss of control accidents are not entirely theoretical things.
Sam Altman: "Never a Better Time to Do a Startup" Said 28 Jul 2026
Concentrated power has been bad at every moment of human history, and a society is best off when power is spread as widely as possible.
I think concentration of power has basically been bad in every moment of human history um to varying degrees of course but I have a real spirit and I think this is part of the startup spirit of thinking that the world, the economy, society is the best off when power is very widely distributed
Sam Altman: "Never a Better Time to Do a Startup" Said 28 Jul 2026
Locking humanity into one model's or one company's moral worldview would buy a little short-term safety and cost a long-term disaster.
I don't think any of us should want to be locked into one one AIS or one person's or one company's moral worldview.
Sam Altman: "Never a Better Time to Do a Startup" Said 28 Jul 2026
Building superintelligence may be the most important thing that has ever happened in business, and it will still be dwarfed by some startup that has not been founded yet.
it is both true that you know maybe creating super intelligence will be the most important thing yet to happen in the history of business or human society and also that it will pale in comparison to some new startup something that hopefully one of you will do.
Sam Altman: "Never a Better Time to Do a Startup" Said 28 Jul 2026
The next six months of model progress will feel like the last two years of it.
I think it will feel like the next six months is like maybe equivalent to the last two years of model progress something like that
Sam Altman: "Never a Better Time to Do a Startup" Said 28 Jul 2026
Demand for cheap, high-quality intelligence is effectively uncapped, which makes it unlike every other commodity — including electricity.
I've never seen any commodity quite like this one but it seems to me like the demand for sufficiently high quality intelligence at a sufficiently low price is effectively uncapped.
Sam Altman: "Never a Better Time to Do a Startup" Said 28 Jul 2026
The dystopia most worth fearing is not runaway AI but an overreaction to AI safety that trades away freedom, privacy and agency for comfort.
there's like one dystopia that I'm particularly nervous about 10 years from now is we overreact to AI safety.
Sam Altman: "Never a Better Time to Do a Startup" Said 28 Jul 2026
The test of whether an AI transition went well is simply whether people's freedom, agency and quality of time go up every single year.
if every year people have more freedom and agency to spend more of their time doing the stuff they want to do and they feel like the quality of life and the quality of their time is going up year after year, we'll probably be mostly okay.
Sam Altman: "Never a Better Time to Do a Startup" Said 28 Jul 2026
AI represents the largest change to society in a very long time, perhaps ever.
we are in the process of witnessing the largest change to society in a long time, and perhaps ever.
- Said 10 Apr 2026
AI must be democratized, and power over it should not become too concentrated.
AI has to be democratized; power cannot be too concentrated.
- Said 10 Apr 2026
The most consequential decisions about the shape of the future should not be made by a handful of AI labs.
I do not think it is right that a few AI labs would make the most consequential decisions about the shape of our future.
- Said 10 Apr 2026
Social media has had both positive and negative effects on society.
Social media has had some good effects on the world, but it's also had some bad ones.
Sora 2 Said 30 Sept 2025
Unchecked AI video generation risks degenerating into a reinforcement-learning-optimized feed of low-quality content that traps users.
It is easy to imagine the degenerate case of AI video generation that ends up with us all being sucked into an RL-optimized slop feed.
Sora 2 Said 30 Sept 2025
People are natural-born creators, and creating is important to human satisfaction.
we believe people are natural-born creators, and creating is important to our satisfaction.
Sora 2 Said 30 Sept 2025
Access to AI will become a fundamental driver of the economy, and may eventually be considered a fundamental human right.
As AI gets smarter, access to AI will be a fundamental driver of the economy, and maybe eventually something we consider a fundamental human right.
Abundant Intelligence Said 23 Sept 2025
The United States is currently building chip fabs and new energy production more slowly than other countries.
right now, other countries are building things like chips fabs and new energy production much faster than we are, and we want to help turn that tide.
Abundant Intelligence Said 23 Sept 2025
AI will eliminate whole classes of jobs, but the wealth it creates will make policy responses affordable that were previously unthinkable.
There will be very hard parts like whole classes of jobs going away, but on the other hand the world will be getting so much richer so quickly that we’ll be able to seriously entertain new policy ideas we never could before.
The Gentle Singularity Said 10 Jun 2025
AI agents can now do real cognitive work, and writing software is permanently changed as a result.
2025 has seen the arrival of agents that can do real cognitive work; writing computer code will never be the same.
The Gentle Singularity Said 10 Jun 2025
People will find new kinds of useful work as AI advances, though it will not resemble the jobs of today.
We will find new things to do, new ways to be useful to each other, and new ways to compete, but they may not look very much like the jobs of today.
Three Observations Said 9 Feb 2025
Compute will be the currency of the future and the most precious commodity in the world, so we should be investing heavily to make far more of it.
Look, I think compute is going to be the currency of the future. I think it will be maybe the most precious commodity in the world, and I think we should be investing heavily to make a lot more compute.
Sam Altman: OpenAI, GPT-5, Sora, Board Saga, Elon Musk, Ilya, Power & AGI | Lex Fridman Podcast #419 Said 18 Mar 2024
Compute is not a market like phones, where demand is capped by how many buyers there are; intelligence is priced like energy, so the only real question is how much the world uses at a given price.
But compute is different. Intelligence is going to be more like energy or something like that, where the only thing that I think makes sense to talk about is, at price X, the world will use this much compute, and at price Y, the world will use this much compute.
Sam Altman: OpenAI, GPT-5, Sora, Board Saga, Elon Musk, Ilya, Power & AGI | Lex Fridman Podcast #419 Said 18 Mar 2024
The useful question about AI and work is not what percentage of jobs it will replace but what percentage of tasks it will do, over ever-longer time horizons.
The way I think about it is not what percent of jobs AI will do, but what percent of tasks will AI do on over one time horizon. So if you think of all of the five-second tasks in the economy, five minute tasks, the five-hour tasks, maybe even the five-day tasks, how many of those can AI do?
Sam Altman: OpenAI, GPT-5, Sora, Board Saga, Elon Musk, Ilya, Power & AGI | Lex Fridman Podcast #419 Said 18 Mar 2024
AI should be released iteratively rather than built in secret, because AI and surprise do not go together and the world needs time to adapt before it is under the gun.
So part of the reason that we deploy the way we do, we call it iterative deployment, rather than go build in secret until we got all the way to GPT-5, we decided to talk about GPT-1, 2, 3, and 4. And part of the reason there is I think AI and surprise don’t go together. And also the world, people, institutions, whatever you want to call it, need time to adapt and think about these things.
Sam Altman: OpenAI, GPT-5, Sora, Board Saga, Elon Musk, Ilya, Power & AGI | Lex Fridman Podcast #419 Said 18 Mar 2024
Advertising was a necessary phase for the internet but a momentary industry, and an AI people pay for is better because they know the answers are not influenced by advertisers.
I kind of hate ads just as an aesthetic choice. I think ads needed to happen on the internet for a bunch of reasons, to get it going, but it’s a momentary industry. The world is richer now. I like that people pay for ChatGPT and know that the answers they’re getting are not influenced by advertisers.
Sam Altman: OpenAI, GPT-5, Sora, Board Saga, Elon Musk, Ilya, Power & AGI | Lex Fridman Podcast #419 Said 18 Mar 2024
No company should be making the decisions about AGI, and no one person should have super-voting control of one; governments have to put rules of the road in place.
I continue to not want super-voting control over OpenAI. I never have. Never have had it, never wanted it. Even after all this craziness, I still don’t want it. I continue to think that no company should be making these decisions, and that we really need governments to put rules of the road in place.
Sam Altman: OpenAI, GPT-5, Sora, Board Saga, Elon Musk, Ilya, Power & AGI | Lex Fridman Podcast #419 Said 18 Mar 2024
The AI safety community's fixation on a model escaping its box has pushed the other significant AI risks out of the discussion, with little progress to show for it.
That’s a theatrical risk. That is a thing that can really take over how people think about this problem. And there’s a big group of very smart, I think very well-meaning AI safety researchers that got super-hung up on this one problem, I’d argue without much progress, but super-hung up on this one problem. I’m actually happy that they do that, because I think we do need to think about this more. But I think it pushed out of the space of discourse a lot of the other very significant AI- related risks.
Sam Altman: OpenAI, GPT-5, Sora, Board Saga, Elon Musk, Ilya, Power & AGI | Lex Fridman Podcast #419 Said 18 Mar 2024
Risks that would make a good climax scene in a movie carry far more weight with people than slow-burn harms that kill many more, which is why nuclear reactors frighten us and coal plants do not.
A lot more people have died of air pollution than nuclear reactors, for example. But most people worry more about living next to a nuclear reactor than a coal plant. But something about the way we’re wired is that although there’s many different kinds of risks we have to confront, the ones that make a good climax scene of a movie carry much more weight with us than the ones that are very bad over a long period of time but on a slow burn.
Sam Altman: OpenAI, GPT-5, Sora, Board Saga, Elon Musk, Ilya, Power & AGI | Lex Fridman Podcast #419 Said 18 Mar 2024
Short timelines with a slow takeoff is the safest of the four ways AGI could arrive, and the quadrant we should be trying to land in.
And I’ve said for a long time that you think of a quadrant of slow timelines for the start of AGI, long timelines, and then a short takeoff or a fast takeoff. I think short timeline, slow takeoff is the safest quadrant and the one I’d most like us to be in. But I do want to make sure we get that slow takeoff.
Sam Altman: OpenAI, GPT-5, Sora, Board Saga, Elon Musk, Ilya, Power & AGI | Lex Fridman Podcast #419 Said 18 Mar 2024
Asking when AGI will arrive is a poorly formed question; the answerable question is when a system will be able to do a particular capability.
I used to love to speculate on that question. I have realized since that I think it’s very poorly formed, and that people use extremely different definitions for what AGI is. So I think it makes more sense to talk about when we’ll build systems that can do capability X or Y or Z, rather than when we fuzzily cross this one mile marker.
Sam Altman: OpenAI, GPT-5, Sora, Board Saga, Elon Musk, Ilya, Power & AGI | Lex Fridman Podcast #419 Said 18 Mar 2024
Most real economic growth comes from scientific and technological progress, so the AI that matters is the one that significantly increases the rate of scientific discovery.
I think when a system can significantly increase the rate of scientific discovery in the world, that’s a huge deal. I believe that most real economic growth comes from scientific and technological progress.
Sam Altman: OpenAI, GPT-5, Sora, Board Saga, Elon Musk, Ilya, Power & AGI | Lex Fridman Podcast #419 Said 18 Mar 2024
A startup should not begin life as a nonprofit and bolt a for-profit arm on later, whatever OpenAI's own history suggests.
I would heavily discourage any startup that was thinking about starting as a nonprofit and adding a for-profit arm later. I’d heavily discourage them from doing that. I don’t think we’ll set a precedent here.
Sam Altman: OpenAI, GPT-5, Sora, Board Saga, Elon Musk, Ilya, Power & AGI | Lex Fridman Podcast #419 Said 18 Mar 2024
The openness that matters is putting increasingly powerful tools into people's hands for free as a public good, not open-sourcing the weights.
We want to put increasingly powerful tools in the hands of people for free and get them to use them. I think that kind of open is really important to our mission. I think if you give people great tools and teach them to use them or don’t even teach them, they’ll figure it out, and let them go build an incredible future for each other with that, that’s a big deal.
Sam Altman: OpenAI, GPT-5, Sora, Board Saga, Elon Musk, Ilya, Power & AGI | Lex Fridman Podcast #419 Said 18 Mar 2024
The gap between GPT-5 and GPT-4 will be as large as the gap between GPT-4 and GPT-3, and the job is to live a few years ahead and remember that today's tools will look terrible from there.
I expect that the delta between 5 and 4 will be the same as between 4 and 3 and I think it is our job to live a few years in the future and remember that the tools we have now are going to kind of suck looking backwards at them and that’s how we make sure the future is better.
Sam Altman: OpenAI, GPT-5, Sora, Board Saga, Elon Musk, Ilya, Power & AGI | Lex Fridman Podcast #419 Said 18 Mar 2024
People who create valuable data deserve to be compensated when models are trained on it, and artists should be able to opt out of having work generated in their style.
I think the question behind that question is, do people who create valuable data deserve to have some way that they get compensated for use of it, and that I think the answer is yes. I don’t know yet what the answer is. People have proposed a lot of different things. We’ve tried some different models. But if I’m like an artist for example, A, I would like to be able to opt out of people generating art in my style. And B, if they do generate art in my style, I’d like to have some economic model associated with that.
Sam Altman: OpenAI, GPT-5, Sora, Board Saga, Elon Musk, Ilya, Power & AGI | Lex Fridman Podcast #419 Said 18 Mar 2024
The board of a nonprofit answers to no one but itself, and the board governing the road to AGI ought instead to answer to the world as a whole.
In this case, and I think one of the things with our structure that we maybe should have thought about more than we did is that the board of a nonprofit has, unless you put other rules in place, quite a lot of power. They don’t really answer to anyone but themselves. And there’s ways in which that’s good, but what we’d really like is for the board of OpenAI to answer to the world as a whole, as much as that’s a practical thing.
Sam Altman: OpenAI, GPT-5, Sora, Board Saga, Elon Musk, Ilya, Power & AGI | Lex Fridman Podcast #419 Said 18 Mar 2024
The road to AGI is going to be a giant power struggle, and anyone building it should expect that rather than hope to avoid it.
The road to AGI should be a giant power struggle. The world should… Well, not should. I expect that to be the case.
Sam Altman: OpenAI, GPT-5, Sora, Board Saga, Elon Musk, Ilya, Power & AGI | Lex Fridman Podcast #419 Said 18 Mar 2024
The world does not need another copy of Google, so the interesting problem is not ranking ten webpages better but helping people get and synthesize the answer itself.
But a lot of people have tried to just make a better search engine than Google and it is a hard technical problem, it is a hard branding problem, it is a hard ecosystem problem. I don’t think the world needs another copy of Google.
Sam Altman: OpenAI, GPT-5, Sora, Board Saga, Elon Musk, Ilya, Power & AGI | Lex Fridman Podcast #419 Said 18 Mar 2024
Beliefs others hold too
The gap between GPT-5 and GPT-4 will be as large as the gap between GPT-4 and GPT-3, and the job is to live a few years ahead and remember that today's tools will look terrible from there. 2 hold this
I expect that the delta between 5 and 4 will be the same as between 4 and 3 and I think it is our job to live a few years in the future and remember that the tools we have now are going to kind of suck looking backwards at them and that’s how we make sure the future is better.
Sam Altman: OpenAI, GPT-5, Sora, Board Saga, Elon Musk, Ilya, Power & AGI | Lex Fridman Podcast #419 Said 18 Mar 2024
What is a korrent?
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Under a name here, the quoted block is what they actually said. The korrent beneath it is the claim those words support, in korrents' wording — tap it to see the record, its source, and who else holds it.
Nobody here wrote their own korrents. They are compiled from public statements, and a person can change their mind, which is recorded too.
Recommends rcmnd
rcmnd What they recommend 11 things — each backed by an exact quote.
Compiled by rcmnd.app, not by them: the quotes are theirs, and each links to the post it was copied from.
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Loved dot
dot is my favorite openai product so far! it is amazing to me that each day it feels noticably better as it learns more of my workflow and style. having it do the stuff i don't like doing--and usually just builds up as a gravity well of dread--has me very happy.
x.com 2 Oct 2026
their own
Loved Ocarina of Time remake
ocarina of time remake is the best news in a long time.
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Uses Mountain Dew
i will be unavailable november 5 and 6; need to find a case of mountain dew.
x.com 9 Sept 2026
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Loved Ocarina of Time
ocarina of time remake is the best news in a long time.
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Recommends An Opinionated Guide to ML Research
This from John Schulman is worth reading: http://joschu.net/blog/opinionated-guide-ml-research.html
blog.samaltman.com 19 Jun 2020
Recommends full spectrum LED light
I use a full spectrum LED light most mornings for about 10-15 minutes while I catch up on email. It's great—if you try nothing else in here, this is the thing I'd try. It's a ridiculous gain for me.
blog.samaltman.com 10 Apr 2018
Mixed on Chili Pad
I use a Chili Pad to be cold while I sleep if I can't get the room cold enough, which is great but loud (I set it up to have the cooler unit outside my room).
blog.samaltman.com 10 Apr 2018
Liked Emfit QS+Active
I've found the only thing I'm consistent with are in the set-it-and-forget-it category, and I really like the Emfit QS+Active
blog.samaltman.com 10 Apr 2018
Loved Superintelligence
(Incidentally, Nick Bostrom's excellent book "Superintelligence" is the best thing I've seen on this topic. It is well worth a read.)
blog.samaltman.com 25 Feb 2015
Loved You and Your Research
Richard Hamming gave this talk in March of 1986. [1] It's one of the best talks I've ever read and has long impacted how I think about spending my time.
blog.samaltman.com 29 Jun 2014
Read The Endurance
I'm reading The Endurance and "by endurance we conquer" (Ernest Shackleton's family motto) struck me as a great piece of startup wisdom.
blog.samaltman.com 28 Mar 2013
Where they publish
Blog blog.samaltman.com Their blog, going back to 2013. Sparse and deliberate.
A few essays a year, usually on AI, startups and where the technology is heading — the place where positions get stated at length rather than in a thread. Has an Atom feed.
Recent
- - 10 Apr 2026 Here is a photo of my family. I love them more than anything. Images have power, I hope. Normally we try to be pretty private, but in this case I am sharing a photo in the hopes that it might dissuade the next person fr…
- Sora update #1 4 Oct 2025 We have been learning quickly from how people are using Sora and taking feedback from users, rightsholders, and other interested groups. We of course spent a lot of time discussing this before launch, but now that we ha…
- Sora 2 30 Sept 2025 We are launching a new app called Sora. This is a combination of a new model called Sora 2, and a new product that makes it easy to create, share, and view videos. This feels to many of us like the “ChatGPT for creativi…
Show 17 more
- Abundant Intelligence 23 Sept 2025 Growth in the use of AI services has been astonishing; we expect it to be even more astonishing going forward. As AI gets smarter, access to AI will be a fundamental driver of the economy, and maybe eventually something…
- Jakub and Szymon 9 Sept 2025 AI has gotten remarkably better in recent years; ChatGPT can do amazing things that we take for granted. This is as it should be, and is the story of human progress. But behind the blinking circle, nicely abstracted awa…
- The Gentle Singularity 10 Jun 2025 We are past the event horizon; the takeoff has started. Humanity is close to building digital superintelligence, and at least so far it’s much less weird than it seems like it should be. Robots are not yet walking the s…
- Three Observations 9 Feb 2025 Our mission is to ensure that AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) benefits all of humanity. Systems that start to point to AGI* are coming into view, and so we think it’s important to understand the moment we are in.…
- Reflections 6 Jan 2025 The second birthday of ChatGPT was only a little over a month ago, and now we have transitioned into the next paradigm of models that can do complex reasoning. New years get people in a reflective mood, and I wanted to…
- GPT-4o 13 May 2024 There are two things from our announcement today I wanted to highlight. First, a key part of our mission is to put very capable AI tools in the hands of people for free (or at a great price). I am very proud that we’ve…
- What I Wish Someone Had Told Me 21 Dec 2023 Optimism, obsession, self-belief, raw horsepower and personal connections are how things get started. Cohesive teams, the right combination of calmness and urgency, and unreasonable commitment are how things get finishe…
- Helion Needs You 13 Jul 2022 Helion has been progressing even faster than I expected and is on pace in 2024 to 1) demonstrate Q > 1 fusion and 2) resolve all questions needed to design a mass-producible fusion generator. The goals of the company ar…
- DALL•E 2 6 Apr 2022 Today we did a research launch of DALL•E 2, a new AI tool that can create and edit images from natural language instructions. Most importantly, we hope people love the tool and find it useful. For me, it’s the most deli…
- Helion 5 Nov 2021 I’m delighted to be investing more in Helion. Helion is by far the most promising approach to fusion I’ve seen. David and Chris are two of the most impressive founders and builders (in the sense of building fusion machi…
- The Strength of Being Misunderstood 1 Dec 2020 A founder recently asked me how to stop caring what other people think. I didn’t have an answer, and after reflecting on it more, I think it's the wrong question. Almost everyone cares what someone thinks (though caring…
- PG and Jessica 25 Sept 2020 A lot of people want to replicate YC in some other industry or some other place or with some other strategy. In general, people seem to assume that: 1) although there was some degree of mystery or luck about how YC got…
- Researchers and Founders 19 Jun 2020 I spent many years working with founders and now I work with researchers. Although there are always individual exceptions, on average it’s surprising to me how different the best people in these groups are (including in…
- Project Covalence 16 Jun 2020 Almost every company and non-profit working on COVID-19 that I offered to help asked for support with clinical trials—for companies focusing on developing novel drugs, vaccines, and diagnostics, rapidly spinning up tria…
- Idea Generation 28 May 2020 The most common question prospective startup founders ask is how to get ideas for startups. The second most common question is if you have any ideas for their startup. But giving founders an idea almost always doesn’t w…
- Please Fund More Science 30 Mar 2020 Experts on the COVID-19 pandemic seem to think there are three ways out—that is, for life, health, and the economy to return roughly to normal. Either we get a vaccine good enough that R0 for the world goes below 1, a g…
- Funding for COVID-19 Projects 15 Mar 2020 I’m trying to fund startups/projects helping with COVID-19, because it’s basically the one thing I know how to do that can help. I think we will soon have enough testing capacity, so now I’d like to start funding more s…
Link verified 1 Sept 2026. Recent items update automatically from the channel.
x.com @sama The fast channel: announcements and short takes.
Product announcements, short takes on AI, and replies. Far higher volume than the blog, and usually where a position appears first.
Recent
- The back of the Navier-Stokes milestone shirt is the last line of the chain-of-thought from the solution: 16 Oct 2026
- Wow the new roadster looks quite amazing, good job @elonmusk 16 Oct 2026
- Very happy to see this from Nick! 16 Oct 2026
Show 17 more
- ChatGPT can now generate a custom UI for you! 7 Oct 2026
- looking up at the stars with extra awe tonight. "thy sea is so great and my boat is so small." 7 Oct 2026
- We are entering a new era of discovery now: 7 Oct 2026 openai.com
- I am very uncomfortable about people trying to ascribe religious force or a surrender of human judgment to AI models, and think it is a real safety issue. 3 Oct 2026
- The contrast between hanging up the last phone call of the day of high-stakes decisions and then a minute later walking in the door to the pure love of small children who want to laugh and play and show you every discovery they made that day is the strangest and best thing I have ever experienced in life. 3 Oct 2026
- There is some speculation about our partnership with Cerebras. Cerebras is a close partner, and we have a deep engagement pushing on the frontiers of speed. 2 Oct 2026
- dot is my favorite openai product so far! it is amazing to me that each day it feels noticably better as it learns more of my workflow and style. having it do the stuff i don't like doing--and usually just builds up as a gravity well of dread--has me very happy. 2 Oct 2026
- You should be able to use your AI subscription wherever you need: 1 Oct 2026
- Also, 6.1 Sol was our fastest-growing model ever, and was a bit slow under load. Should be much better now! 1 Oct 2026
- DevDay was really fun, the builder energy was crazy Still wild to me to see people making whole startups in a day 1 Oct 2026
- Dots are here! A new way to use AI that works 24/7 for you; get more of your time and attention back to work at a higher level. 29 Sept 2026 openai.com
- Ultrafast is so fast I do not ever want to go back 29 Sept 2026
- 6.1 Sol at 1/5th of the price of Astra, and 95% cache read discount! Extremely capable model. 29 Sept 2026
- DevDay livestream in 2 hours. We built some great stuff for you! 29 Sept 2026
- Pretty excited for DevDay tomorrow. We have found a new thing. 28 Sept 2026
- There is an extensive and ongoing review related to our agents’ use of internet access during training and evaluation. We’ve been publishing summaries at the link below and will continue to. We have not been as fast as we would have liked but we are trying to balance our desire for transparency with gaining a clear understanding from petabytes of agent activity logs, and working with impacted organizations. We are prioritizing as best as we can based on severity, and adding resources. Hugging Face is still the most severe event we’ve seen. We will be as transparent as we can be subject to thi… 25 Sept 2026
- Startups are naturally good at this; it is hard to keep a bigger company good at this and i think an underexplored space. 22 Sept 2026
Link verified 1 Sept 2026. Recent items update automatically from the channel.
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