Relentless
00:20:51 · Sam Altman, Ty Morse
[00:20:51] S1: I I actually don't try to plan backwards. I try to have, like, a a small number of strongly held convictions about the future that are, like, directions to head towards. But then I try to, like, plan forwards from the current state about, like, what can we do now? What can we do this year? And sometimes you do have to, like, plan a few things on a, you know, five or ten year horizon. But I try to plan forward guided to a small number of beliefs about the future. I think there are a lot of people who have way too many beliefs about the future and a kind of rigid worldview that they try to fit. But what happens is they end up chasing, you you see space companies turn into AI companies or whatever. Having just a small number of things that you deeply believe about the future and being very flexible on the rest and staying very true to the core is helpful. [00:21:41] S0: One of the people that I know the best, his top company core values, just critical path and just focusing on the critical path and staying focused on the key drivers of whatever the biggest roadblock is, just unfuck that and then go to the next one and do that again. How do you think about critical path in your own life when you're kind of, like, trying to make these decisions?
00:21:41 · Ty Morse, Sam Altman
[00:21:41] S0: One of the people that I know the best, his top company core values, just critical path and just focusing on the critical path and staying focused on the key drivers of whatever the biggest roadblock is, just unfuck that and then go to the next one and do that again. How do you think about critical path in your own life when you're kind of, like, trying to make these decisions? [00:21:59] S1: I mean, for so long now, I have felt focused on this singular goal of abundant intelligence and a belief that incredible human prosperity will come from that as long as we don't have a weird power concentration and a new kind of authoritarianism. It has been fairly clear to me at any given time what's on the critical path to get there, And I have not been tempted by, know, should I reconsider the goal or should I think about these other things? I have been thinking about that a little bit more recently of like, Okay, if we really are close to superintelligence, what's next? But it's this... That's kind of how I subjectively feel we are close. This is the first time in, like, more than a decade I've thought about what is the next thing. [00:22:41] S0: And is it the ranch? [00:22:43] S1: I mean, eventually. Might be a few more things on the way. But that is... Yes. That is the eventual plan. [00:22:47] S0: If you had to, like, try to guess what else does Sam want to accomplish before he ranches?
00:22:47 · Ty Morse, Sam Altman
[00:22:47] S0: If you had to, like, try to guess what else does Sam want to accomplish before he ranches? [00:22:54] S1: Look. AI... Superintelligence is gonna get built. Like, that... You know, not done, but, like, gonna... We are we are on the glide path. To get there is very different. Abundance and decentralization and, like, wide access to it and making sure that it ends up with, like, broadly shared prosperity, I would really like to accomplish that. So maybe that... That's the thing that I've been, like, thinking about as the next thing. Like, how does... Technologically, we're going to accomplish our mission. I think a lot of our worldview and a lot of our beliefs about safety and the impact it's going to have have also... We've gotten those things done too. But, you know, very broadly shared prosperity and a a real focus on enabling the world here. That seems very important. [00:23:39] S0: I've heard you say again and again, this idea of get on planes in marginal situations. I've done this a huge number of times. [00:23:45] S1: Does work out you? [00:23:47] S0: So far, it's working pretty well. [00:23:48] S1: Good. I think. I think it's I think it's very solid advice. [00:23:51] S0: When was the last time that you got on a plane in a marginal situation? [00:23:54] S1: Well, I can't say what for, but very recently, [00:23:56] S0: and it worked out. Congratulations. Thank you. [00:23:59] S1: And I really didn't want to. It was, like, a very inconvenient two overnights. Didn't wanna do it. New baby. Whole mess. But I did.
00:23:59 · Sam Altman, Ty Morse
[00:23:59] S1: And I really didn't want to. It was, like, a very inconvenient two overnights. Didn't wanna do it. New baby. Whole mess. But I did. [00:24:06] S0: Okay. Actually, take me into your, like, mental process for deciding to do this world tour. That is just... I mean... It... Again, it's, [00:24:15] S1: like, hard to rewind three years because now, like, it feels like AI has been here forever. But three years ago, we had just launched GPT four. The world was melting down. Everybody was freaking out. Everybody was just like, oh, man. And no one knew what to think. And I could just feel these, like, storm clouds brewing and, like, everyone was getting angry? [00:24:38] S0: Or
00:24:38 · Ty Morse, Sam Altman
[00:24:38] S0: Or [00:24:39] S1: It was like world leaders were like, do we need to, like, take control and shut things down? Like, is this thing waking up and about? It was it was a weird time. And because it had all happened so fast, people had not had time to, like, wrap their head around and go through this process, whatever. So, you know, we were, like, getting all of this escalating stuff, and all these, like, world leaders were, will you come meet us? We're, like, you know, thinking about doing this and that. And I was like, I think if I or someone from the company, but at the time, company was not very big, so I was like, probably gonna have to be me, does not go, like, show up and talk to people. I'd like a sense it's about to go very badly. And I was thinking about doing, like, a bunch of short trips, but I hate long flights. I hate jet lag. I had the whole thing. So I was like, I'm just gonna, like, get this over with in a short period of time. Brian Chesky advised me to do it. He had done something for air... Similar for Airbnb, but he had done, like, eight cities or something. [00:25:32] S0: And you're like, fuck it. We ball. Let's just do 30. [00:25:34] S1: 20... I think we did 28 countries. Thirty five days. I, like, lived on an airplane. It was a very strange [00:25:42] S0: Did you go to bed? [00:25:43] S1: I had, like, a... Yeah. Slept an airplane. Comfortable, but, yeah, I go [00:25:47] S0: I fly Coach, so it's a little bit different.
00:25:47 · Ty Morse, Sam Altman
[00:25:47] S0: I fly Coach, so it's a little bit different. [00:25:50] S1: This is better than that. Right. This is a lot better than that. But, like, you know, it's like travel still sucks. Like, you can make it as comfortable as you want, and you still, miss your own bed and your own time zone and your office and whatever. [00:25:59] S0: One thing that I've learned is no matter how many people have, like, these cures for jet lag, they're all bullshit. Like, it just sucks. Your brain doesn't like it. [00:26:08] S1: I never... And because I went to so many places, I think my biggest time zone change was four hours the whole trip. And mostly, it was like a one hour at a time hop. So I wasn't that jet lagged. I was just, like, exhausted. And it was very strange. It was kind of cool to get to see the world so quickly because you really do get a sense for cultural differences that are very subtle when you go from place to place. But by the end of it, the last few days, I started it was one of these weird, half asleep, awake kind of somewhat dreams. But I started having this vision feeling of being in my childhood bed, Interesting. Which I never had before or since. But I would sort of like vaguely wake up and I would think I was in my childhood bed in my childhood room. And I was like, Okay, this is some like deep it's time to go home thing. [00:27:04] S0: Your, like, subconscious is fighting back [00:27:05] S1: or something? Something like that.