00:38:15 · John Collison, Sam Altman
[00:38:15] S0: But you would view that as, like, compute not keeping up? [00:38:17] S1: I would view that as compute not keeping up. And if I look at the, like, fundamental cost of turning the sand into intelligence, that should go down. The cost of energy should go down. The cost of chips should go down. The rest of the cost of the supply chain should go down. If it doesn't go down, I'll be very sad. But for it to go down, given how much value there is in this, supply's got to go away. [00:38:38] S0: Okay. So you would like to see a compute glut where we start producing a lot more memory, a lot more data centers, lot more of all the inputs, and as a result, anyone who owns a computer for whatever reason can have one. [00:38:50] S1: People give different numbers for the kind of the cost per gigawatt measured in, like, the five year total cost of ownership right now. But, like, let's say... Let's pick $70,000,000,000 as a number. I think if that number... [00:39:02] S0: That's a cost to install... [00:39:04] S1: And run it.... Five years. Yep. Okay. I think if that number were, like, 20 instead of 70, we should be much happier. And we should still demand to get, you know, 10 x better performance out of it with smarter models every year. [00:39:17] S0: Presuming you don't think, like, two is a good number. Like, something's gone wrong if we're seeing two because it would be surprising if we were... Or is two better than 20? [00:39:27] S1: Why is it not? Like, I don't think that will happen, but why do we not want that number to be as low as possible?
00:39:27 · Sam Altman, John Collison
[00:39:27] S1: Why is it not? Like, I don't think that will happen, but why do we not want that number to be as low as possible? [00:39:33] S0: I don't know. This is your theory. You have a view that generally deflationary technology is good. [00:39:37] S1: I I do believe in that. Yeah. I'm pro deflation in this sense. Pro deflationary technology. [00:39:41] S0: So how are we gonna get there? What's gonna happen between now? [00:39:43] S1: Well, $2 a gigawatt. I can't imagine. [00:39:45] S0: Okay. What's gonna happen between now and $20 a gigawatt? [00:39:47] S1: $20,000,000,020 a gigawatt would be really [00:39:49] S0: great. Okay. Yeah. 20,000,000,000 a gigawatt. [00:39:50] S1: Even to get down to 20, you're getting into the realm of energy's gotta get cheaper. Mhmm. But certainly, like, all of the gross margin stacking that happens between melting sand... Or the equivalent of melting sand and getting the token back, a lot of that's got to get compressed. [00:40:05] S0: You could just get there with eliminating profits, or do you need to also make the energy cheaper? I don't know the math off the top of my head. [00:40:12] S1: I mean, if you assume, like, all materials were free and no one made a profit, maybe you could get there in the current energy envelope, but only just...
00:40:12 · Sam Altman, John Collison
[00:40:12] S1: I mean, if you assume, like, all materials were free and no one made a profit, maybe you could get there in the current energy envelope, but only just... [00:40:17] S0: I see. Personal agents are the most exciting thing happening in AI right now. One of the... There's many exciting things happening in AI, but one of the most exciting things, you guys launched Dots a few weeks back at this stage, and, there's a bunch of other, people also launching, in the field. What will be true of the winning personal agent? [00:40:43] S1: It's like intelligence, context, tools. It's a limited number of things, and that someone is going... I think no one has yet figured out the, like, the thing that people... Like, people like these, but this is not something that people are like, I cannot imagine my life without this thing, in a way that when people talk about coding agents or even ChatGPT, they do say. And someone, I think someone soon is gonna figure out what that looks like. And you talked about one of the reasons why this doesn't quite work yet. But I think this is, like, a small number of ideas away from a super mainstream thing. [00:41:18] S0: Oh, interesting. You think we have not had the Macintosh moment for personal agents? [00:41:22] S1: I think we have not. [00:41:24] S0: Do have any sense of what the shape of it will be? [00:41:26] S1: I I think it'll look a lot like the current, you know, Dots or Muse or Grokbat or whatever, but it'll just work. [00:41:32] S0: Like,
00:41:32 · John Collison, Sam Altman
[00:41:32] S0: Like, [00:41:34] S1: it'll just work. It'll be reliable. You'll, like, never have... You'll just, like, give it more complex tasks, it'll do all of those things. [00:41:40] S0: Computer use dynamic is very interesting to me because not everyone is embracing the new agentic future with open arms, but it's not totally within their control because you can just have an agent using a computer. Where do you think that dynamic goes, this sort of cat and mouse? [00:42:04] S1: Like, rough instinct is the world will... I mean, people are gonna fight this in both directions [00:42:10] S0: Mhmm. [00:42:10] S1: But eventually converge on something like... You're allowed to, like, tell an AI to use your computer on your behalf, including software. [00:42:18] S0: Always talk about that, but isn't it a bit like the semantic web? It's, like, a really nice conceptual idea. Yeah. [00:42:23] S1: I was gonna say, like, I don't think this is, like, so black and white. I don't think I have, like, a super high degree of confidence of how this is gonna play out. As a consumer, I feel, like, somewhat annoyed if I can't [00:42:33] S0: Yes. [00:42:35] S1: Have an AI automate tasks on my own computer. Like, I want it to feel like it's my agent doing what I ask, but then it gets... Like, I don't I don't wanna have to, like, go do something like this. Yeah.
00:42:43 · John Collison
[00:42:43] S0: Yeah. I note a very interesting dynamic right now, which is every company is really eager to add AI to their products in a very specific way, which is there is a tab or pop up widget or something that gives you a messaging type UI. And it's often surprisingly capable. And so you can say, hey, I actually want to return my most recent order. And then you're kind of surprisingly impressed when it actually is able to find your most recent order, and, you know, it's a bit janky, and it can do all those things. However, no consumer really wants this UI because consumers have strong... Not immovable, but strong preferences for their existing primary chat app, the kind of top of wallet app that they open Yeah. When they want to go to do something. And what they want is to be able to say, hey, go find my recent order on this business and refund it or something like that. And I noticed that businesses are really reluctant to allow people to use those businesses inside another AI app. It's like, oh, we're gonna lose control in our motive, whatever. And it just strikes me as fine because your defensibility probably did not come from your ability to put together HTML. Your defensibility came from the brand loyalty and the product And the new UI is that agentic interaction inside ChatGPT or Gemini, you know, or whatever it is. But all businesses disagree with me. And they're very good at business. Maybe I they're
00:44:32 · Sam Altman, John Collison
[00:44:32] S1: mean, again, I have, like, a bias here, but I so directionally agree with you. Like, I have such an extreme preference to buy something from Amazon versus some random e commerce vendor that I don't know if I can return to or I don't know if I can trust to deliver it quickly or something. Like, if I ask Cheeky Pint to buy me something, and I can choose Amazon versus some other thing, like, 10 out of 10 times I click Amazon. I pay a higher price. I have just, like, such... Yes. And it has nothing to do with, like, my experience of clicking on amazon.com. [00:45:05] S0: Exactly. [00:45:06] S1: And now, I think you could say we have not done a good enough job offering partners a platform inside of ChatGPT if they don't want this to happen, but... And again, I maybe I'm really biased think Amazon's, like, in a great... I think they're in a great place of commerce, it's, like, much more authentic. [00:45:23] S0: Yeah. Amazon, in particular, has this amazing defensibility via the fulfillment network. And so you can use Amazon kind of from anywhere. [00:45:30] S1: I super trust that. Yeah.