Sam Altman – OpenAI Founder Reveals His Writing System

David Perell (Host) 00:00.070

you ever wonder how sam altman takes notes thinks about annual planning thinks about sabbaticals what he's going to actually work on how he chose to focus on AGI well those are the things that we talk about in this episode and we get answers

David Perell (Host) 00:12.590

let's get into the conversation with sam altman

David Perell (Host) 00:16.360

all right sam i want to begin with how is knowledge of l lms changed how you think about writing and communication

Sam Altman (CEO) 00:26.950

i mean i think we are going to all now all of us i think many of us are going to write in a different way in the future i don't mean like people are just going to use LLMS to like write stuff for them because one of the strangest things that i think happens is when people put a

Sam Altman (CEO) 00:40.910

few bullet points into an LLM have it generate a nice email send it to somebody else and then they summarize it on the other end because we can't we just can't agree that you know we just want the bullet points back and forth and there's still this societal nicety but

Sam Altman (CEO) 00:55.810

someone is going to build probably somebody already has built a first version of this like a great tool to write in a new way where you have this thing that is not you know expanding your bullet points but is helping you discover new things in the idea space and that's awesome

Sam Altman (CEO) 01:15.830

like that's what computers do at their best right is they help they are a tool that help you do things you otherwise couldn't do

David Perell (Host) 01:22.510

i've always thought it was strange how we've had this tools for thought idea for decades and yet the vast majority of the way people write is they open up microsoft word and they have no aid from a computer really it's just like a typewriter

Sam Altman (CEO) 01:38.710

i mean it turns out that like writing is pretty good i don't we can for sure make it better but i understand why that's where we are

David Perell (Host) 01:47.870

tell me if this is baseless or accurate or where on the spectrum it is but i find it interesting that there's a juxtaposition between words being more important on the input and then moving away from words with the output so dall E

Sam Altman (CEO) 02:02.310

i think words are going to be a huge part of how we communicate with computers how we program computers and natural language is kind of the interface to computers that people want i think i think that's been you know sci-fi predicted that for a long time but i think a big part

Sam Altman (CEO) 02:23.590

of the revolution of chatgpt was you could just talk to a computer in plain english and you get it to do all these things

Sam Altman (CEO) 02:31.910

it won't be the only way we want to interact with computers of course and you'll have multimodal input as well as output but we are very finely evolved to use language

David Perell (Host) 02:43.990

there's also something special about text

Sam Altman (CEO) 02:46.670

yeah for

David Perell (Host) 02:47.110

sure searchable malleable there is a reason that this has been such a part of like to imagine humanity and human culture without language it's like oh it seems impossible i can't do it

David Perell (Host) 03:03.030

and even text itself the there's a rigor to text

Sam Altman (CEO) 03:07.750

there's a rigor to thinking in text for sure yes i get

David Perell (Host) 03:10.230

i get it because you can point to specific words and sentences that you disagree with rather than just the overall vibe so if we're having a conversation i can't remember the exact word that you said but if there's a transcription i can say i was this that i really liked this

Sam Altman (CEO) 03:26.150

that i think we can make some minor changes to

David Perell (Host) 03:29.310

how should chatgpt be changing how we teach our kids how to write

Sam Altman (CEO) 03:34.170

i don't think we know yet what the writing of the future the process is going to look like i would bet it's just like a safe baseline that it's not going to change all that much i think we will have new tools that let people write in different ways and hopefully get more sort of

Sam Altman (CEO) 03:50.520

idea refinement and generation out of the process but

Sam Altman (CEO) 03:54.320

uh you know this thing that people say of like no one 's ever going to learn to write anymore because now it's just like that that's not why people really write in the first place like the kind of writing that you can just the kind of thing you would do by having chat GPT go

Sam Altman (CEO) 04:06.590

write your your kind of you know essay for english class that's not real that's not what this is

Sam Altman (CEO) 04:12.110

about anyway and if chatgpt can help people do do a writing like activity and get higher quality thinking out of it that's wonderful

David Perell (Host) 04:23.230

tell me about that

Sam Altman (CEO) 04:24.550

literally if we believe that part of the value a big part of the value of writing is to clarify your own thinking and we can have new tools that help you do that better than before that'll be a big win

David Perell (Host) 04:39.240

what i think of chatgpt as raising the returns to is the initial seed the big bang moment of an idea and this is a way that i like using chatgpt is i know that i have a distinct idea of chatgpt disagree with me and then once i have that idea if i can clarify in some sort of way

David Perell (Host) 04:56.920

then chatgpt can help me find examples and stories things that amplify and help to grow the initial seed that i've planted

Sam Altman (CEO) 05:04.630

totally i think i you know i try to like watch people like very different walks of life use chat GPT and it's always eliminating

Sam Altman (CEO) 05:14.870

so i watched two students use it to kind of like help with their homework do their homework to be honest recently and one of them basically just like put in their thing and wrote their whole essay and i was like appalled because i kind of knew that that was a theoretical thing

Sam Altman (CEO) 05:33.870

that people were doing that you know significant volume or whatever but you hear about it but like to like watch someone just like do that and then get an essay that was you know bad but like passable out of it was like that was like a real like what have we done moment i was

Sam Altman (CEO) 05:52.150

like visceral in a way that you know i just hadn't i'd never seen someone do it before

Sam Altman (CEO) 05:56.470

and then i watched someone else use it in a very different more interactive way to try to do something more like what you're talking about which is like i have this idea i can't quite articulate it i'm kind of stuck let me get unblocked and let me generate a bunch more ideas and

Sam Altman (CEO) 06:13.270

the thing that came out of that was far better than i think anybody would have done on their

Sam Altman (CEO) 06:18.150

own and i was like reflecting a lot on that and the first question was like a bad question like if you can just put something in and get a super interesting or that i thought not a super passable response i i think we're just like asking people to do the wrong thing whereas if

Sam Altman (CEO) 06:37.310

it's something that like gets them to want to think about a question differently and use the tool to help them get somewhere they wouldn't have gotten on their own that's really interesting

David Perell (Host) 06:48.990

how do you use chatgpt every day

Sam Altman (CEO) 06:51.870

i used to only use it for a few things and both chatgpt has gotten better and i figured out how to use it more and so the cool thing now is i really do use it as a general purpose tool and i hope that a few years from now when you asked i'll say i use it for most things that i

Sam Altman (CEO) 07:07.070

do like every few months i find new ways to use it new ways to incorporate it's it's obviously still terribly integrated into most people 's workflows but that's just going to get better and better

David Perell (Host) 07:21.130

when you're talking to friends you're like you should use chat GPT for this what are the themes that you're telling them to do

Sam Altman (CEO) 07:29.980

i mean the thing that i hear about from my friends that they love it for the most is like computer programming help in some way or other and the number of people who say that's like transformed my life yeah i mean like it's very gratifying here it's a lot of fun like that there

Sam Altman (CEO) 07:47.670

are other things where people say it's like change the way my kids learn or teachers say change the way teachers that's great too and but i and then there's like incredible examples with healthcare the way people use this for creative work but the programming ones like near and

Sam Altman (CEO) 08:01.990

dear to my heart many of my friends are programmers so i hear about that a lot

David Perell (Host) 08:05.510

email yeah you do a lot of writing by email and you've

Sam Altman (CEO) 08:10.550

i do a lot of like very short email like i do a lot of like seven word

David Perell (Host) 08:15.150

emails and how is chatgpt helped you with that

Sam Altman (CEO) 08:22.310

it's super good at summarizing long emails that like most long emails honestly i just stopped i don't even read but if i have to read one it's super good at like chatgpt 's ability to effectively summarize long pieces of content like a really long thread or whatever very

Sam Altman (CEO) 08:39.790

impressive

David Perell (Host) 08:40.790

yeah it was just i got a tour of the library here

Sam Altman (CEO) 08:43.150

yeah that's cool space by the way nice job i like that space a lot it's beautiful

David Perell (Host) 08:47.110

thank you and the i saw the encerto on the wall by nassim taleb and he says that basically the definition of a good book is one that can't be summarized and maybe there's an equivalent

Sam Altman (CEO) 08:59.190

for GPT there's a really interesting there's a really interesting thing there which is that at some sense it took me like years to really understand this but ilya would always say that what these models are really about is compression and we're going to go figure out how to

Sam Altman (CEO) 09:17.480

compress as much knowledge as possible and that's we're going to make AI compression is like the secret to intelligence and that was like i had to meditate on that for a long time i'm sure i still don't fully understand it but there's something dee there

David Perell (Host) 09:38.400

i was talking to your assistant she said that you think very clearly you're like a man of few words but when you say something it's it's really you're clear on what you want and you've really crystallized your message

Sam Altman (CEO) 09:49.630

i guess the part of that that resonates is i do try to like get at the essence of a problem and i i definitely don't like when other people communicate unclearly

David Perell (Host) 10:04.620

i thought it was really interesting in your conversation with joe hudson how you spoke about the way that you've released anxiety from your life how has that changed in your internal state shown up in your thinking

Sam Altman (CEO) 10:20.150

i don't remember who said this but someone i don't even remember if this is a friend this is like a famous quote when someone said like most people can't even let themselves think the interesting thoughts much less say the interesting ideas and i think there is something about

Sam Altman (CEO) 10:32.270

the world that has gone horribly wrong there and i'm sure having like background anxiety running is a process makes it harder to think uh new thoughts

Sam Altman (CEO) 10:45.110

and a focus for sure if you're like a bundle of anxiety and you have like an inner monologue spinning you in all sorts of different directions it's hard to really sit down and focus umm but if you're like constantly self critical if you're constantly saying well a lot of other

Sam Altman (CEO) 10:57.230

people think about this if i you know i think a lot of people have i've i've heard people say things like well that might be an interesting idea but i would like feel embarrassed or foolish to even like tell people that i was thinking about it or working on it like if if you

Sam Altman (CEO) 11:14.510

can't even let yourself like go pretty far down the path of exploring the idea before you worry about what other people are gonna think about it that that seems bad

David Perell (Host) 11:25.070

this idea that you have around people spend so much time trying to think about how to be more productive but you're like hold on hold on hold on let's talk about how to really think about what we're going to work on in the first place yeah how does writing help

Sam Altman (CEO) 11:37.190

you do that so first of all i i i strongly agree that if you have a choice between spending some effort thinking about what's work on versus how to like be a little bit more productive in this new method or that new method with a very you should have a very high bar for doing

Sam Altman (CEO) 11:52.280

anything but thinking about what what to work on i think that's just sort of a higher higher impact than most of the time umm of course that doesn't work all the time it's the point you actually have to go execute but i i i often see people who i think are really talented work

Sam Altman (CEO) 12:10.070

super hard are super productive just not spend much time or surprisingly enough and not really spend anytime at all in a meaningful way thinking about what they're going to work on and i think that's like the high order bit so that's part

Sam Altman (CEO) 12:24.070

one in terms of writing is a way to do that i think of writing as sort of like externalized thinking i i still if i have like a very hard problem or if i feel a little bit confused about something have not found anything better to do than to like sit down and make myself write

Sam Altman (CEO) 12:38.510

it out write out like what i'm you know how i'm thinking about it what i think somebody should be try to like figure out how to explain it to myself or to somebody else so i think it's just like it is a super powerful thinking tool i write for my write things down for myself or

Sam Altman (CEO) 12:54.030

for the most and for like private groups the second most and public at this

David Perell (Host) 12:58.070

point very rarely what are the different parameters of clear communication they're sort of the sloganeering there is a good tagline there's also the depth the idea

Sam Altman (CEO) 13:06.150

maze yeah actually i think clear communication is very much less important and very much downstream of actually clear thinking so if you know what you're going to do if you've and if you've like figured out how to like reduce that to the essence of why it's a good idea and what

Sam Altman (CEO) 13:20.630

the plan is going to be what the priorities are going to be then communicating clearly about that is not so hard but getting clearer about the actual ideas is really hard and so i think unclear communication is a symptom of unfocused thinking for the most part

David Perell (Host) 13:37.510

napoleon he has a line about the importance of clear directives clear communication because when you're on the battlefield you need to be able to articulate things simply and have alignment for the team lots of similarities with what you're

Sam Altman (CEO) 13:53.200

saying i mean i don't think that's just napoleon i think that as i understand it i haven't studied a lot of military history but that's like a pretty common refrain like that seems to have been borne out by history but i also think that's like borne out in business that clarity

Sam Altman (CEO) 14:07.910

speed quality of execution all linked

David Perell (Host) 14:12.300

of all the things that you've written what are you most proud of

Sam Altman (CEO) 14:15.720

this is not false modesty truly none of it writing is not my gift and i'm OK with that like writing is super valuable to valuable to me as a tool for thinking for communicating with internally with the org but there's nothing i i am i hope i will do things a bit like stand the

Sam Altman (CEO) 14:37.790

test of time and matter to the world it's not going to be my writing but that doesn't mean i don't get a lot of value out of it

David Perell (Host) 14:43.830

i think that to give you a little bit more credit maybe the purple prose isn't your gift but a piece like how to be successful really influence

Sam Altman (CEO) 14:54.370

me thank you

David Perell (Host) 14:56.230

i appreciate that to make every next thing that you do be a footnote to what you've done before that's a profound

Sam Altman (CEO) 15:02.030

idea yeah i i mean i think i i hope that like i will contribute some ideas to the world that matter i again i hope all of those matter much less than open AI does but that's nice of you to say so i genuinely appreciate it

David Perell (Host) 15:15.550

what got you to start writing the personal blog

Sam Altman (CEO) 15:18.150

i wanted to like practice writing i had this like sentence i had watched paul graham write and he's an amazing writer i never had any aspirations that i was going to be anything like that but i i had seen how powerful it was for helping startup founders and forgetting to invest

Sam Altman (CEO) 15:33.190

in good startup founders so i wanted to get i wanted to like try to get good at it i'm like i'm not a naturally gifted writer but i believe like you know with practice anybody people can get good at a lot of things i wanted to like kind of continue doing the thing that seemed to

Sam Altman (CEO) 15:52.470

work so well for YC getting good founders umm but honestly it wasn't it's not my calling in life i don't really do it anymore

David Perell (Host) 16:04.510

you wanted to be a novelist that

Sam Altman (CEO) 16:06.030

astounded me i did but only for the like romantic life of it not that i thought i was ever going to be a good writer just seemed like this like very cool friend to sit you know smoking in a cafe in paris and

David Perell (Host) 16:18.070

yeah you can still

Sam Altman (CEO) 16:19.030

do that i could i could probably not the path of my life is what i've gone but i

Sam Altman (CEO) 16:25.240

could so it turned out i'm like not a very good writer and i'm not going to be a blogger and that's OK but i am still very happy at the experiment because i learned that i can like right for myself to clarify my own thinking and that has been super powerful

Sam Altman (CEO) 16:43.150

even the ability to like write a message to like explain to a team what a plan is and why we're going to do it i think doing that in writing versus doing that in a meeting is often very

David Perell (Host) 16:53.150

powerful have you done that recently

Sam Altman (CEO) 16:55.390

it's like if we're starting a new project or if we're putting together some sort of like plan that we're going to execute on forcing myself to write it down rather than just like sit in a meeting and let it spitball around has

David Perell (Host) 17:06.070

been very good do you have a format of

Sam Altman (CEO) 17:08.070

sorts no no i mean i try to like keep it under i don't think long

David Perell (Host) 17:13.030

is good yeah so

Sam Altman (CEO) 17:14.350

i try to keep it short but beyond that no real constraints

David Perell (Host) 17:17.470

tell me about your just communication lessons that you've learned from peter thiel he is so distinct in the way that he communicates i know you've spent a lot of time with him especially early in your

Sam Altman (CEO) 17:28.150

career he's an amazing communicator and one thing that he does super well he comes up with these like very evocative very short statements that really stick in your brain and i don't know i don't know how to do that i don't really know anybody else who does that like he does but

Sam Altman (CEO) 17:45.790

it's a he has like very interesting things to say and very interesting ways to say them and most people you're lucky to get one or the other he is like a very rare combination of both it's super impressive

David Perell (Host) 17:58.110

what do you think contributes

Sam Altman (CEO) 17:59.110

to that he thinks about the world in this sort of like deeply unconstrained way he has yeah i mean the first thing anybody would say about him is he is a truly brilliant original thinker and that's just rare

David Perell (Host) 18:15.990

there's a boundlessness about your thinking that really stands out like i feel like you have that same sort of lack of constraint

Sam Altman (CEO) 18:23.710

i think he's he's more of a like here is this totally here's a totally different view on something that no one else has ever expressed and now sounds like obviously at least interesting and often obviously correct and i think my view of the world is often more like can we just

Sam Altman (CEO) 18:47.980

do more like we have this like vector can we push on it harder

David Perell (Host) 18:52.340

is that like the david dortch sense of like everything is possible that's not limited by the constraints of

Sam Altman (CEO) 18:58.060

physics and and also that there's not enough people don't to tie back to peter i remember sometime someone asked like a long time ago someone asked him what was your biggest investment mistake ever and everybody expected him to say something like well i invested in this company

Sam Altman (CEO) 19:15.910

but also money and it blew up and he said the biggest mistake i don't remember the B or C but the biggest mistake ever let's say it was not investing in a series B of facebook and that is the kind of mistake i try not to make so i'm like a big believer and find what is working

Sam Altman (CEO) 19:30.870

and like go aggressively after it

David Perell (Host) 19:33.870

ideas are such a power law and it's about finding that core thing and just doubling tripling down on that

Sam Altman (CEO) 19:39.710

yeah i think that the really good ideas are rare and when you find one you should quadruple down on it and the only thing you push on you know you should audit on a few of these things in writing and business whatever i really i really really believe in this principle and i mean

Sam Altman (CEO) 19:59.790

i think this is why like all business almost all business books are terrible right there's like three good ideas and three hundred pages and what a reader wants is three good ideas on one page

David Perell (Host) 20:10.150

yeah did paul graham teach you anything specifically about writing

Sam Altman (CEO) 20:14.070

yeah mostly just by reading his essays i think like many other people my introduction to the startup world and excitement about it came from reading PG 's essays he's like an unbelievable writer and that was the topic of like great interest to me and many other people i think a

Sam Altman (CEO) 20:30.710

whole generation of us like copied PG and all of these ways