Speaker A
Sam, you've been considered one of the leading figures in AI.
Sam Altman discusses ChatGPT's impact as an equalizing technology, its benefits, challenges, and rapid adoption in society.
Key Takeaways
- ChatGPT is a versatile AI tool that enhances learning, healthcare, and personal advice.
- AI technology acts as an equalizer by democratizing access to expert knowledge.
- Rapid AI adoption poses challenges that require careful, responsible management.
- Ongoing AI improvements will continue to transform society and job markets.
- Human drive for innovation fuels continuous AI advancement without a defined endpoint.
Summary
- Sam Altman explains ChatGPT as an AI chatbot that has evolved significantly over three years, now capable of providing healthcare advice, learning assistance, and life guidance.
- ChatGPT helps users solve real-life problems, such as diagnosing health symptoms and offering personalized parenting advice.
- Altman shares personal experiences using ChatGPT for raising his eight-month-old baby, highlighting its role as a life advisor.
- He emphasizes technology, especially AI, as a great equalizing force, providing high-quality information access to people regardless of wealth.
- Altman acknowledges the rapid adoption of AI technology, faster than any previous technology, and the societal challenges it presents.
- He discusses concerns about the speed of change, potential job displacement, and the need for responsible AI integration.
- Despite risks, Altman believes society has managed to mitigate many downsides so far and continues to adapt thoughtfully.
- He hopes AI development never stops, driven by humanity’s relentless desire to improve and create.
- Altman notes AI models are now outperforming top mathematicians in complex tasks, indicating rapid advancement.
- He explains that AI generates much of its own information by drawing on past data and problem-solving processes.
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
Speaker A
You co-founded OpenAI, which led to ChatGPT, which is celebrating three years now.
Speaker A
ChatGPT, when all this is happening, first off, what is ChatGPT?
Speaker B
It's like an AI chatbot, you ask a question, it tells you what to do.
Speaker A
And it tells you what to do, and so it's like Google search, but you made it into a more of a thing that you can have a conversation with.
Speaker B
Yeah, it's gotten like much smarter over the last three years, so it used to not do very much, maybe used to only do Google search.
Speaker B
And now it can, it can like really do a lot of stuff, people are asking it for like healthcare advice, how to learn stuff.
Speaker A
Tell me what are the pros, what are the pros of ChatGPT?
Speaker B
The number of people that reach out to us and are like, I had this crazy health condition, I couldn't figure out what was going on.
Speaker B
I just put my symptoms into ChatGPT and it told me what test to ask the doctor for and now I got it and now I'm cured.
Speaker B
Like, that's great, that happens a lot.
Speaker B
You can definitely learn anything.
Speaker A
Anything.
Speaker B
Pretty much, I haven't found anything I can't learn.
Speaker B
You can do your work way, way faster, you can use it instead of Google.
Speaker B
You can use it for like advice about your life.
Speaker B
People talk about all the people in their life and trying to figure out what to do.
Speaker B
The idea is it's like a general purpose sort of life advisor.
Speaker A
Yeah, and I know that you, you and your husband just had a baby, congratulations.
Speaker B
We did, thank you.
Speaker A
Yeah, how old is he?
Speaker B
Eight months.
Speaker A
Eight months old?
Speaker A
Are you loving him?
Speaker B
So much, I have no non-cliche thing to say, but it is by far so much better than anything anyone tells you.
Speaker B
I am just so incredibly happy.
Speaker A
Is he into trucks?
Speaker B
Yeah, he loves trucks, we have to like spend a lot of time watching the garbage truck and play with them around.
Speaker A
He does love trucks.
Speaker B
Cars, anything.
Speaker B
He watched the like F1 season finale this weekend, it was the first time he got to watch TV.
Speaker B
And he was just like, really?
Speaker A
He's thrilled, and do you use ChatGPT when when raising your baby?
Speaker B
I, I, I mean I feel kind of bad about it because I, we have this like genius level at everything intelligence sitting there like waiting to unravel the mysteries of humanity.
Speaker B
And I'm like, why does my kid stop dropping his pizza on the floor and laughing?
Speaker A
Yeah.
Speaker B
You know, and so I feel like I'm not asking a good enough question, but it is, I, I don't, I cannot imagine having gone through the like figuring out how to raise a newborn without ChatGPT.
Speaker B
Clearly people did it for a long time, no problem.
Speaker A
Yes.
Speaker B
But, so, so I know it like it's clearly it was possible.
Speaker A
Yes, it was possible.
Speaker B
But I have relied on it so much.
Speaker A
Yeah.
Speaker B
I mean it's obviously like the most important thing that happened in my life, so it's top of mind and I use it all the time.
Speaker B
But like I was a couple of months ago, I was at a party, I was talking to this guy, you know, we had kids about the same age, so we were talking about that.
Speaker B
And you know, he was like, oh, you know, what's your kid doing, normal conversation.
Speaker B
And he's like, yeah, these, you know, six months old, once they start crawling, it's, it's everywhere, they go everywhere.
Speaker B
And I was like, my six month old can't crawl yet.
Speaker A
Mine can't.
Speaker B
And he was like, you sure like, you know, maybe like, you sure about that, you think he's okay?
Speaker A
My kid can't.
Speaker B
And I was like, well, I think he's like about to start, I'm sure he's doing fine, and by the way, I bet my kid can do a lot of things yours can't, so it's all right.
Speaker A
Yeah.
Speaker B
Um, but then I like ran to the bathroom and I was like, do I need to take my kid to like the doctor tomorrow morning?
Speaker A
Is this okay?
Speaker B
Every kid be able to walk in six months.
Speaker A
Yeah, crawl.
Speaker B
Um, and.
Speaker A
I mean yours can't.
Speaker B
No, no, my, my walked at six.
Speaker A
Yeah.
Speaker B
Right.
Speaker A
Mine was on Dancing with the Stars at seven months.
Speaker B
There we go, semi-finalist, no big deal.
Speaker B
Um, but, but it was a really, I got this like great answer back, which was like, of course it's normal, of course you don't need to go to the doctor.
Speaker B
You know, parents do all these sorts of things and, and, and by the way, and it, it's personalized, like ChatGPT gets to know you.
Speaker B
Um, and you know, by the way, you know, the CEO of OpenAI, you probably are around like all these high achieving people, maybe you don't want to like project that onto your kid and you should just like relax and he'll be fine and, you know, whatever.
Speaker B
And I was like, oh, okay.
Speaker A
I've seen you in a couple of interviews too where you, where you were saying people are asking you about ChatGPT and you're like, well, it's kind of interesting because rich people have these great amazing doctors and lawyers and business managers.
Speaker A
You know, whereas people that don't make enough as much money as these people, they don't get those opportunities and what ChatGPT does, they have the same, you can get the same answer.
Speaker A
You're just typing in these questions, you'll get the best.
Speaker B
No, I, I think this is a cool thing about technology, I think there's many downsides to technology.
Speaker B
But there's a lot of upsides and one of the big upsides is it is a, it is a sort of equalizing force in many ways.
Speaker B
You know, I, I remember people used to say so when the iPhone came out, the the richest, most powerful person in the world got the same piece of hardware that was, you know, billions of other people got.
Speaker B
And I think AI is pushing in the same direction and it'll take some work to ensure it goes in this way, but it, it should be like a good force for society.
Speaker A
So what, what, what about ChatGPT now, what are the, what are the cons, what, what are we, what are we worried about?
Speaker A
What are the people, the things that people don't like about it?
Speaker B
Um, I mean, a long list of things.
Speaker B
But, uh, one of the things that I'm worried about is just the rate of change that's happening in the world right now.
Speaker B
You know, it's, this is a three-year-old technology, no other technology has ever been adapted, adopted by the world this fast.
Speaker B
Um, it is a truly general purpose thing.
Speaker B
It, the same thing that can figure out how to go cure a bunch of diseases can be used in a bunch of negative ways.
Speaker B
The, the rate at which jobs will change over may be pretty fast.
Speaker B
I have no doubt that we'll figure out all new jobs to do in sort of, I hope much better jobs.
Speaker B
But the speed with which this is happening, um, is this just sort of like barrels through society and making sure that we introduce this to the world in a responsible way where people have time to adapt, to give input, to figure out how to do this.
Speaker B
You could imagine that us getting that wrong.
Speaker A
Yeah, and are people on it?
Speaker B
Yeah, like again, this has gone really well so far, uh, better than I would have thought.
Speaker B
If you look at the trajectory of the last three years, we have integrated this into our lives, into society.
Speaker B
Um, people use it in all sorts of, of, of really great ways.
Speaker B
And we've been able to get so far, a lot of the benefits and I think we've done a good thoughtful job as a society of mitigating the downsides.
Speaker B
But we're still feeling our way through this and I'm sure as the intelligence keeps ramping, there will be a lot more to come.
Speaker A
And when do you think like it's all going to be like perfected?
Speaker B
Um, I hope never.
Speaker B
You know, I hope, I hope just we have a relentless, we as the human species, we have this relentless drive to improve and make things better and to want more and to do more and to create more.
Speaker B
And I hope that keeps going forever.
Speaker B
But if you just look at how far it's come even this year in 2025.
Speaker B
You know, we started this year with these models that could do a little bit of math.
Speaker B
And by the end of the year, we're doing better math than our best mathematicians at our most difficult competitions.
Speaker A
Where's all the information coming from?
Speaker B
Well, at this point, it generates a lot of its own information.
Speaker B
Um, if you think about when you solve a new problem or write something funny, you draw upon your past experiences.
Speaker B
You think really hard, you write something down, maybe you see how it goes, you see how someone responds, you see if it works.
Speaker B
And then you build on top of that and on top of that and on top of that.
Speaker B
So we're at the point now where the models can, um, think harder and come up with new information.
Speaker A
And what's the biggest thing you see happening out of, out of, uh, ChatGPT in in the next five years?
Speaker B
Five years is a long time.
Speaker B
Um, in five years, I think a lot, next year, uh, I hope we'll start to see these models really make small but important new scientific discoveries.
Speaker B
And in five years, I hope they're curing diseases.
Speaker A
Thank you so much for coming on and talking about this stuff, I appreciate this.
Speaker A
And please, uh, hug that little baby.
Speaker B
Thanks for having me.
Speaker A
I'll do that.
Speaker A
Sam Altman, everybody, we'll be right back with more Tonight Show, stick around.
Topics:Sam AltmanChatGPTOpenAIArtificial IntelligenceAI technologyAI adoptionTechnology equalizerParenting advice AIAI challengesFuture of work
