Sam Altman

1985– · American entrepreneur and investor (born 1985)

Topics: artificial intelligence, life, mathematics

• I believe the merge has already started, and we are a few years in. Our phones control us and tell us what to do when; social media feeds determine how we feel; search engines decide what we think.

  — Sam Altman

• We are already in the phase of co-evolution — the AIs affect, effect, and infect us, and then we improve the AI. We build more computing power and run the AI on it, and it figures out how to build even better chips.

  — Sam Altman

• It is a failure of human imagination and human arrogance to assume that we will never build things smarter than ourselves.

  — Sam Altman

• I’m reasonably optimistic about solving the technical alignment problem. We still have a lot of work to do but you know I feel …better and better over time, not worse and worse.

  — Sam Altman

• Trust the exponential. Flat looking backwards, vertical looking forwards.

  — Sam Altman

• AI will probably most likely lead to the end of the world, but in the meantime, there'll be great companies.

  — Sam Altman

• It is possible that we will have superintelligence in a few thousand days (!); it may take longer, but I’m confident we’ll get there.

  — Sam Altman

• When bubbles occur, smart people get overly excited about a grain of truth. If you look at most bubbles in history, like the technology bubble, there was something real there. Technology was really important. The internet was really a big thing. People got too excited about it.

  — Sam Altman

• I expect AI to be capable of superhuman persuasion before it is superhuman at general intelligence, which may lead to some very strange outcomes.

  — Sam Altman

• I’m a Midwestern Jew. I think that fully explains my exact mental model—very optimistic, and prepared for things to go super wrong at any point.

  — Sam Altman