@sam-altman · 66 positions · 1 change of mind · On ppll ↗
Co-founder and CEO of OpenAI; previously president of Y Combinator.
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Each column is a stretch of time in which the same views came up; a new column starts when one appears or goes quiet. Quiet means nothing on it in our sources for that stretch, which is not the same as a change of mind; Dropped means they said they no longer hold it; tap the card for which claim and when. Revised means the view carries on but one of its claims was dropped. Each row is one view, in the same place all the way along. The number is how many claims in that stretch; we hold 3 in 2019, 0 in 2020, 0 in 2021, 0 in 2022, 0 in 2023, 20 in 2024, 9 in 2025, 38 in 2026.
Power over AI should be spread widely, not held by a few labs, one company or one person
Their wordsIn 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.
Their wordsI 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.
Their wordsI 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 AltmanCo-founder and CEO of OpenAIStandards should help prevent the concentration of power, including by making sure new companies and open-model companies can compete.↗@sama on Xx.com · 22 Sept 2026
Their wordsStandards should help prevent the concentration of power, including by making sure new companies and open-model companies can compete.
Their wordsIn 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.
Their wordsSo 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 AltmanCo-founder and CEO of OpenAIAn iterative loop where society and this technology evolve together is what will lead to the highest chance of getting this right.↗@sama on Xx.com · 1 Sept 2026
Their wordsAn iterative loop where society and this technology evolve together is what will lead to the highest chance of getting this right.
Their wordsAnd 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 AltmanCo-founder and CEO of OpenAIManaging 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 Xx.com · 1 Sept 2026
Their wordsManaging 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.
Their wordsUm 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 AltmanCo-founder and CEO of OpenAIWe 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 Xx.com · 18 Aug 2026
Their wordsWe 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.
Sam AltmanCo-founder and CEO of OpenAITo ensure that, we need ways to ensure that alignment and safety techniques stay ahead of progress in model capabilities.↗@sama on Xx.com · 14 Sept 2026
Their wordsTo ensure that, we need ways to ensure that alignment and safety techniques stay ahead of progress in model capabilities.
Sam AltmanCo-founder and CEO of OpenAIthe safety and security challenges in front of us as we confront superintelligence are immense↗@sama on Xx.com · 20 Oct 2026
Their wordsthe safety and security challenges in front of us as we confront superintelligence are immense
Sam AltmanCo-founder and CEO of OpenAIthis is a critically important moment for cyber defense with AI; there is not much time to act.↗@sama on Xx.com · 27 Aug 2026
Their wordsthis is a critically important moment for cyber defense with AI; there is not much time to act.
Their wordsA 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.
Their wordsThat’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.
Their wordsBut 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.
Their wordsLook, 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.
Their wordsI'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.
Their wordsAs AI gets smarter, access to AI will be a fundamental driver of the economy, and maybe eventually something we consider a fundamental human right.
Their wordsThe 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 AltmanCo-founder and CEO of OpenAIThere 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 Singularityblog.samaltman.com · 10 Jun 2025
Their wordsThere 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.
Their wordsWe 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.
Their wordsbut 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.
Their wordsI 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.
Their wordsI 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.
Their wordsit 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.
Their wordsI 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.
Their wordsis 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.
Their wordsif 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.
Their wordsI 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.
Their wordsIt 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 AltmanCo-founder and CEO of OpenAIi 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 Xx.com · 4 Aug 2026
Their wordsi 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.