Altman on OpenAI’s IPO Plans, AI Agent Dots, AI Security

Sam Altman now joins us live on Bloomberg Television from Fort Mason in San Francisco with BTEC host Ed Ludlow. Thank you, Romaine. And we'll start with that transition to an always on agent, Dots. Sam, do you know what's interesting in the presentation is how internally open AI staff talk to Dots? Do you get what I mean? I think I do, but tell me. It isn't treating it like AI, like, hey, chat GPT. Yeah. Question. It's a conversation. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's not I don't think it's, like, anthropomorphized. They don't we don't quite talk to it like a person, but there is a different style to it than traditional chat GPT. The reason I wanted to catch that first who's Dots for, really? It started as a premium product. We know it's you you know, we're putting our best model Astra in this. Premium kinda being prosumer. Sorry to interrupt. Or or it's an enterprise product? More like more like for getting work done, I think think is largely enterprise, but there's a lot of people that are gonna build their own startups that are sort of in the traditional prosumer category. But this is, like, a very capable model, and it's a ton of usage. So we're starting for something at the top end of the market, and you will see us over time make a mass market consumer version. How much do you and the team, various people at OpenAI benchmark against the agents that are already out there? So how much do you use a Grock Bot, a Muse, and Instinct from the product perspective? Because they they've been out there a while, and people are actually using them. I've tried them. I don't use them regularly. I have not found a sort of place for them in my life, but I, you know, try to try every major new AI product. Product. This is a totally different category. Like, the amount of work, the level of capability, the level of intelligence this can take on, I think this is just a completely new thing. Why is it different? Like, literally, are we talking about its capabilities, or is this an economic discussion of how you've priced it or where you've made it available in existing tiers? Well, I mean, it is priced higher than other things in the market, but the reason for that is, is because of the capability and the amount of compute worth putting into this, which is why I think it's useful in a new kind of way at a new level. You've launched, GBT 6.1 Soul at, like, Astra capability. And a fifth of the price. But the price is so different. And, like, I've been trying to understand, like, what is the big picture story? It seems like we're moving towards cheaper inference at a time where everyone's much more willing to pay for it. Well How did you arrive at the tiers that you've done? I mean, we've talked for a long time about our goal is to make increasingly better intelligence and to drive the price down and down. And the reason, that I think both of those are true is the better you make AI, the more people wanna use it. So people are clearly willing to spend more on AI than ever before, but they they wanna do so much with it. So so our belief is that if we continue to drive the quality up and the price down and really lead the Pareto frontier at every point on that curve, people will use our tools in tremendous ways. And just even here today, like, hearing from developers about what they're building with this and what what they can do if we continue to drive the price down is really quite remarkable. What is OpenAI's business momentum right now? How did you end the third quarter? What does that look like? I don't think we, like, put our specific numbers out, but numbers in the newspapers this morning. It is our, I mean, it's like a very steep growth period for us. I think what people love are models. We have really been able to make new products and new tools for developers, for enterprises. ChatGPT is growing phenomenally well. So across the board, consumers, developers, enterprises, all this new stuff that we're launching at Dev Day, we see a lot of business momentum. The the reported number was ARR 70,000,000,000, I think, a three q number. I don't know Is that meaningful to you? I don't know where these reported leaks or reported numbers come from. But I I am obviously not gonna comment either way on that, but I will say, like, very pleased with the growth. The interesting thing about Dots as a product and agent, but also, six point one Soul is you made the decision to release those. This week, you held back the release of Astra 6.1, and last week, you paused training on a separate model. Yeah. Explain that how you come to that decision. So SOL 6.1. Okay. We held back Astra 6.1. We've been talking about this for a few months now, but our we're clearly getting into a very steep part of the capabilities curve. And given that our whole mission is to build this for people and to empower people, and part of that safety, part of that's why they're distributing the benefits, when we need to make a decision about slowing down our training or our model release so that we can make more progress and put more of our attention into safety, alignment, monitoring, security, we will happily do that. Now, of course, we're gonna continue to make progress, but the world should always have confidence in our safety cases, in our safety claims, and that we are going to be responsible with this technology. And and we don't wanna do this thing where, like, oh, we need, you know, regulation or we need our competitors to do x, y, or z, we won't be safe. We are going to do this responsibly. We want the world to have that confidence. Now there are still things that we can very reasonably release. So, like, a faster version of Astra or a cheaper version of Astra Six, we can totally do on these wonderful new products. But, you know, I think, like, I understand why some people are just like, full YOLO pedal to the metal go, but we're gonna we're gonna have to be responsible as we push towards these new levels of capabilities. There are some difficult questions, posed. I'm very conscious of the developer audience and also like the users of the technology. You said that the the two main things that they want are speed and performance, and you you released, new mechanisms to achieve that with existing generation of model. Why is that better as a technique than releasing a more capable model? Well, I mean, they want that too. We will also do that. The the so I think all of those things are good. You know, speed, price, and capability are certainly three of the things people ask for the most often. And I think the answer is all. People want all of them in different different use cases. That said, ultrafast, I think, is a really special thing. I did not appreciate how much I was going to like it and how hard it is for me to go back. I should have known because, like, we all want everything to be faster, but it is awesome. Is it an economic proposition for OpenAI? Are the economics a bit good for you? Well, it's much more expensive to run, but we do charge more for it too. So we tried to make it something that, you know, it's like a We can talk to Sarah about the balance between Yeah. I mean, it's like, you know, I I think the market will decide, but I think people will be excited about it at this price, and it's reasonable for us. You you were just asked again about an IPO, and what you said is you want to be public one day. Yes. But, essentially, the duties of being a public company are incompatible with a dedication or focus on safety. Is that Not quite. To be a newly public company and for us to understand how to live life as a public company with, you know, pressure from investors and sort of just the all of the additional weight that comes with that while we are going through this period of adjusting to this new level of capability, and the new safety requirements for that. We just wanna get our feet under us, make sure we understand how to operate in this new way, be able to make some of these decisions in front of us without the pressure of being a newly public company. And then I think we'll be public at some point. There will be more new levels that come, but but it won't be all at the same time. Do you feel support from the existing cap table to just hold off 2028? Does it matter? Our investors seem, like, very happy with us and very patient. Let me ask you this to conclude. It's very rare people have said for you and Jerome Powell and Elon Musk to agree on something, this idea of pacing the frontier. And OpenAI has disclosed quite clearly, like, internal frameworks of what you plan to do. I think people are still trying to understand what the collective effort looks like. If you collaborate with your peers or you work with the administration, what does that actually result in on an AI safety I think one thing that would be good would be shared standards for safety cases about when you know, what you need at each level to proceed, without undue risk and then some sort of shared methods for ensuring that everybody is doing a good job in implementing those. And that could be independent evaluators. That could be government review. That could be companies checking each other's work. There have been many proposals there. But I think those two things would be good. How do you feel about the disclosure of the risk? You talked to the United Nations about it doesn't matter the percentage risk. Still too great. Yeah. The news cycle had in a tropics prospectus, the the existential threat to humanity disclosed in black and white. Is that incumbent on you as a frontier lab? I appreciate you felt confidentially, but do you just need to put it out there? I think this has nothing to do with going public. This is just, I think, our responsibility for our mission and what we're working on To do it anyway. Explain to the world the risks and benefits that we see in the sort of shifting landscape as things evolve. Sam Altman, OpenAI CEO, having us here at Dev Day. Thank you very much. Thank you for coming. Indeed.