Sam Altman – OpenAI Founder Reveals His Writing System

David Perell (Host) 00:00.000

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, with those are the things that we talk about in this episode and we get answers.

David Perell (Host) 00:12.560

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 LLMs changed how you think about writing and communication?

Sam Altman (CEO) 00:26.960

I mean, I think we are going to all not all all 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) 00:40.840

few bullet points into an LLMs, 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 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) 00:55.800

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

Sam Altman (CEO) 01:15.440

awesome. Like that's what computers do at their best, right? Is they they help they are a tool that help you do things you otherwise couldn't do.

David Perell (Host) 01:22.600

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 right? Is they open up Microsoft Word? And they have no aid from a computer really. It's just like a typewriter.

Sam Altman (CEO) 01:36.960

Yeah. 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) 01:47.920

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 or a dolly.

Sam Altman (CEO) 02:02.240

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 it's been, you know, sci-fi predicted that for a long time. But I think a

Sam Altman (CEO) 02:22.720

big part of the revolution of ChatGPT was you could just talk to a computer in plain English and get it to do all these things.

Sam Altman (CEO) 02:31.240

Um, 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) 02:44.040

There's also something special about text.

Sam Altman (CEO) 02:46.560

Yeah, for

David Perell (Host) 02:47.040

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 It's seems impossible. I can't do it.

David Perell (Host) 03:03.000

And even text itself, the there's a rigor to text.

Sam Altman (CEO) 03:07.720

There's a rigor to thinking in text for sure. Yeah, I get

David Perell (Host) 03:10.120

it. 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, "Ah, it was this that I

David Perell (Host) 03:25.200

really liked, this

Sam Altman (CEO) 03:26.120

that I think we can make some minor changes Yeah. to

David Perell (Host) 03:29.280

How should chat I don't think we

Sam Altman (CEO) 03:34.640

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 idea

Sam Altman (CEO) 03:50.880

refinement and generation out of the process. But

Sam Altman (CEO) 03:54.400

uh you know this thing that people say of like well 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 can do by having ChatGPT go

Sam Altman (CEO) 04:06.680

write your your kind of you know essay for English class. That's not real. That's not what this is

Sam Altman (CEO) 04:12.040

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) 04:23.520

Tell me about that.

Sam Altman (CEO) 04:24.560

Literally if 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 is 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 if ChatGPT disagrees with me. And then once I have that idea, if I can clarify in some sort of

David Perell (Host) 04:56.640

way, then ChatGPT can help me find examples and stories, things that

Sam Altman (CEO) 05:04.600

Totally. I think I I I I you know I try to like watch people in like very different walks of life use ChatGPT. and it's always eliminating.

Sam Altman (CEO) 05:14.900

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 um 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

Sam Altman (CEO) 05:33.580

thing that people were doing at 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.

Sam Altman (CEO) 05:51.940

I was like this all in a way that, you know, I just hadn't I never seen someone do it before.

Sam Altman (CEO) 05:56.580

And then I watched someone else use it in a 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

Sam Altman (CEO) 06:12.700

ideas. And the thing that came out of that was far better than I think anybody would have done on their own.

Sam Altman (CEO) 06:18.740

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 like I I a super passable response. I I I think we're just like asking people to do the wrong thing.

Sam Altman (CEO) 06:36.740

Whereas if 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) 06:49.060

How do you use ChatGPT everyday?

Sam Altman (CEO) 06:51.820

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 ask that I'll say I use it for most things

Sam Altman (CEO) 07:06.780

that I 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) 07:21.140

When you're talking to friends, you're like, you should use ChatGPT for this. What are the themes that you're telling them to do?

Sam Altman (CEO) 07:29.140

Uh, 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 transform my life. Yeah, I mean like, it's very gratifying here. It's a lot of fun. Like,

Sam Altman (CEO) 07:47.380

there are other things where you know people say it's like change the way my kids learn or teachers say I change what their teachers that's great too and but I and then there's like incredible examples with healthcare the way people are using this for creative work but the

Sam Altman (CEO) 08:00.700

programming one is like near and dear to my heart. Many of my friends are programmers so I hear about that a lot.

David Perell (Host) 08:05.500

Email. Yeah. You do a lot of writing by email and you've

Sam Altman (CEO) 08:09.740

Uh I do a lot of like very short email. Like, I do a lot of like seven-word

David Perell (Host) 08:15.100

emails. And how does ChatGPT help you with that?

Sam Altman (CEO) 08:18.580

Um, it's super good at summarizing long emails that like most long emails honestly I just stop. 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. I like a really long thread or whatever, very

Sam Altman (CEO) 08:39.780

impressive.

David Perell (Host) 08:40.820

Yeah, it was just I got a tour of the library here.

Sam Altman (CEO) 08:43.140

Yeah, that's a cool space. By the way, nice job. I like that space a lot. It's beautiful.

David Perell (Host) 08:47.140

Thank you. And the I saw the Encherto on the wall by Nassim Tolib 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) 08:59.220

for GPT. There's a really interesting um There's a really interesting thing there which is that at some sense uh 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

Sam Altman (CEO) 09:17.140

to compress as much knowledge as possible and that's what 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 and I'm sure I still don't fully understand it but there's something deep there.

David Perell (Host) 09:38.340

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 in what you want and you've really crystallized your message.

Sam Altman (CEO) 09:49.500

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 unambiguously.

David Perell (Host) 10:04.700

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 change in your internal state shown up in your thinking?

Sam Altman (CEO) 10:20.180

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, but 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

Sam Altman (CEO) 10:31.760

about the world that has gone horribly wrong there. And I'm sure having like background anxiety running as a process makes it harder to think new thoughts

Sam Altman (CEO) 10:45.040

and to focus for sure if you're like a bundle of anxiety and you have like a inner monologue spinning you in all sorts of different directions it's hard to really sit down and focus. But if you're like constantly self-critical if you're constantly saying, "Well, well, other

Sam Altman (CEO) 10:56.840

people think about this." If I even, you know, I think a lot of people have I've heard 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

Sam Altman (CEO) 11:13.360

it." Like, if if you can't even let yourself like go pretty far down the path of an exploring that idea before you worry about what are the people going to think about it, that that seems bad.

David Perell (Host) 11:25.000

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) 11:37.160

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 uh with a very you should have a very high bar uh for

Sam Altman (CEO) 11:52.200

doing anything but thinking about what what to work on. Um I think that's just sort of a higher higher impact thing most of the time. Of course that doesn't work all the time at some point you actually have to go execute but I I I often see people who I think are really talented

Sam Altman (CEO) 12:09.000

um work super hard are super productive. Just not spend much time or surprisingly often not really spend any time 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. Uh so that's that's part one.

Sam Altman (CEO) 12:24.240

In terms of variety writing is a way to do that. I I think of writing is sort of a like externalized thinking. Um I 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

Sam Altman (CEO) 12:37.840

make myself write it out. Um write out like what I'm you know, how I'm thinking about it, what I think somebody should be trying to like figure out how to explain it to myself or to somebody else. So I I think it's just like it is a super powerful thinking tool. Um I write for

Sam Altman (CEO) 12:51.160

my write things down for myself uh or for the most and for like private groups the second most and public at this point

David Perell (Host) 12:58.160

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) 13:06.160

ma's. 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

Sam Altman (CEO) 13:20.400

what the plan is going to be, what the priorities are going to be, then communicating clearly about that is not so hard. But getting clear about the actual ideas is really hard. And so I think unclear communication is is a symptom of unfocused thinking for the most part.

David Perell (Host) 13:37.520

Napoleon, he has a line about the importance of clear directives, clear communication because when you're in 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) 13:53.000

saying. I mean, I don't think that's just Napoleon. I think 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 born out by history. Um, but I also think that's like born out in

Sam Altman (CEO) 14:04.480

business. Uh, that clarity, speed, quality of execution uh all linked.

David Perell (Host) 14:12.280

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

Sam Altman (CEO) 14:15.760

This is not false modesty, truly none of it. Writing's not my gift. And I'm okay 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 am I hope I will do things that like stand

Sam Altman (CEO) 14:37.560

the 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) 14:43.840

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 influenced

Sam Altman (CEO) 14:54.280

me. Thank you.

David Perell (Host) 14:56.200

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) 15:02.000

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 opening eye does. Um but that's nice of you to say so. I genuinely appreciate it.

David Perell (Host) 15:15.600

What got you to start writing the personal blog?

Sam Altman (CEO) 15:18.040

I wanted to like practice writing. I had this like sense 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 start up founders and for getting to

Sam Altman (CEO) 15:32.800

invest in good start up founders. Um so I wanted to get I wanted to like try to get good at it. I 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

Sam Altman (CEO) 15:51.420

thing that seemed to work so well for Yeezy getting good founders. But honestly it wasn't It's not my calling in life. I don't really do it anymore.

David Perell (Host) 16:04.540

You wanted to be a novelist. That astounded

Sam Altman (CEO) 16:06.580

me. Uh I did, but only for the like romantic life of it. Not that I thought I was ever going to be a good writer. It just seemed like this like very cool friend who was sit you know smoking in a cafe in Paris

David Perell (Host) 16:18.020

and yeah. You can still do

Sam Altman (CEO) 16:19.100

that. I could. I could. Probably not the path my life is going to go down but I could.

Sam Altman (CEO) 16:25.260

So it turned out I'm like not a very good writer and I'm not going to be a blogger and that's okay. But I am still very happy with 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) 16:43.260

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) 16:53.060

powerful. Have you done that recently?

Sam Altman (CEO) 16:55.460

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 spit all around. It's

David Perell (Host) 17:06.020

been very good. Do you have a format? of sorts?

Sam Altman (CEO) 17:09.340

No. No. I mean I try to like keep it under I don't think long is

David Perell (Host) 17:13.060

good. Yeah. So

Sam Altman (CEO) 17:14.260

I try to keep it short but beyond that no real constraints.

David Perell (Host) 17:17.460

Tell me about your just communication lessons that you've learned from Peter Thiel. He is so distinct in the way that he communicates and know you've spent a lot of time with him especially early in your career.

Sam Altman (CEO) 17:28.300

He's an amazing communicator uh and one thing that he does super well is he comes up with these uh 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

Sam Altman (CEO) 17:44.860

does, but it's uh 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) 17:58.220

What do you think contributes

Sam Altman (CEO) 17:59.100

to that? He thinks about the world in this sort of like deeply unconstrained way. He has you know I mean the First thing anybody would say say about him is he's a truly brilliant original thinker. And that's just rare.

David Perell (Host) 18:15.940

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) 18:23.660

I think he's he's more of a like here is this totally here is 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) 18:47.900

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 George sense of like everything is possible that's not limited by Yeah. the constraints

Sam Altman (CEO) 18:58.460

of physics Yeah. And also that there's not enough people don't tie back to Peter. Um I remember for 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

Sam Altman (CEO) 19:15.380

this company but all the money and it blew up and he said the biggest mistake I don't know if it was B or C but the biggest mistake ever let's say was not investing in the series B of Facebook. And that is the kind of mistake I try not to make. So I'm like a big believer in find

Sam Altman (CEO) 19:29.580

what is working and like go aggressively after it.

David Perell (Host) 19:33.820

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

Sam Altman (CEO) 19:39.780

Yeah, I think that the really good ideas are rare and when you find one, you should quadruple down on it and should be the only thing you push on. You know, you should probably push on a few of these things. In writing and business, whatever, I I I really I really really believe

Sam Altman (CEO) 19:57.660

in this principle. And I mean, I think this is why like all business almost all business books are terrible, right? There's like three good ideas in 300 pages. And what a reader wants is is three good ideas in one page.

David Perell (Host) 20:10.140

Yeah. Did Paul Graham teach you anything specifically about writing?

Sam Altman (CEO) 20:14.460

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 a topic of like great interest to me and many other people. Um, I

Sam Altman (CEO) 20:30.340

think a whole generation of us like copied PG in all of these ways. Uh, And so, although he was never like, "Let me teach you a class on how to write." I and others clearly took a lot of inspiration because I think he just does it in a style that resonates so much.

David Perell (Host) 20:50.160

clarity, precision, density.

Sam Altman (CEO) 20:52.800

Like if you go read average business book versus PG essay, it's like they're both business writing, but other than that, they're like different species. There's no posture. He says interesting stuff. He says it clearly. He doesn't waste your time. Nothing feels fake.

David Perell (Host) 21:10.400

Pitching, coming up with the story. How does writing factor into that?

Sam Altman (CEO) 21:15.640

Uh Again, I think of like writing as a tool to think more clearly or to get to the essence of something. And then hopefully when you're in a pitch meeting for your startup or whatever, you've already figured out how to get that down to the clear essence of it. Um and if you can

Sam Altman (CEO) 21:38.520

It's really dramatically different to be on the other side of the pitch if the person has like gotten their thinking clear ahead of time or not. It's also a bonus if they're a clear communicator and and they I I I can like think of a few examples of people who I think are

Sam Altman (CEO) 21:53.400

exceptionally clear thinkers and horrible communicators, but it's rare. Like I had to sit here earlier as you were talking about that and think. Um, and so if someone can get their thinking clear before a pitch, then they can get across to you what they're trying to do. And

Sam Altman (CEO) 22:10.400

there are a lot of people who can do this without writing, but I often find their writing is is really is really helpful. And I often find that there are these ideas that I think I'm super clear on. And then I try to make myself write it down write down like a one-page summary

Sam Altman (CEO) 22:23.760

and I was like, "Oh, I didn't really understand that in the first place."

David Perell (Host) 22:27.400

Do you do a lot of Google Docs exchanges with friends?

Sam Altman (CEO) 22:33.200

I used to. I used to like all of life it's just been in this like weird through the looking glass past year and a half or whatever it's been but not even that much. Um since ChatGPT launched all of like the normal hobbies of life pretty much have gotten attenuated.

David Perell (Host) 22:51.040

When you were doing that, how did it help? What did you ask

Sam Altman (CEO) 22:55.200

for? Be like, I'm thinking about this I'm thinking about doing this thing or I'm thinking about this idea just cuz it's interesting um what's the next step or tell me where I'm wrong. And you can do like a lot of that over dinner parties and make a lot of progress. You know, you

Sam Altman (CEO) 23:10.400

can like host friends for a weekend and talk about something a lot and make a lot of progress. But there is something about the process of trying to crystalize it onto a sheet of favor that has to be like internally consistent. That doesn't let you like hide from the weak

Sam Altman (CEO) 23:25.200

points.

David Perell (Host) 23:28.240

The constraint I like to give people is it needs to be short enough that you can send it to me in a

Sam Altman (CEO) 23:33.000

screenshot. Like a mobile phone screenshot? Mm. I I Not for everything Yeah. but I like that I personally think that's like maybe too constraint for some important ideas all even though I directionally super agree with you that like short is short is critical.

David Perell (Host) 23:48.240

How much of your own writing The inspiration is born from conversation.

Sam Altman (CEO) 23:52.160

A lot. But but but it it kind of like comes in as this jumble of ideas and then writing is helpful because it you know I I I think of like conversation as this very generative process and then you've got to like grind it down to the essence and that is best done like sitting in

Sam Altman (CEO) 24:10.440

front of a big monitor with no one else

David Perell (Host) 24:12.000

around. The image of tangled headphones came

Sam Altman (CEO) 24:15.200

into my mind. Interesting. You know. From For me, the image is much more like grinding down rocks than than untangling something. Cuz it's more like a process of like removing than untangling. And when you have all these like slightly different ideas banging against each other,

Sam Altman (CEO) 24:36.200

you kind of end up with the right core.

David Perell (Host) 24:38.080

Mhm. If you were to read a book, what would

Sam Altman (CEO) 24:41.000

it be about? I mean, a lot of times people say like, hey, this AI thinks things really important. Can you recommend me a book to read? And I kind of think about it and say, no, not really. So, I think I would try to like write the book for the people that ask what they should

Sam Altman (CEO) 24:56.000

read about AI. And I think I would start with like here is the historical context of other technological revolutions, why this one will be similar, why it'll be different. Um, here's how the technology actually works. Here's what is possible right now. Here's so this is going to

Sam Altman (CEO) 25:12.880

impact your life this year. Here's the range of things that might be possible in five years and how it might impact your life then. And then if we really kind of let ourselves dream out 100 years. Here's like what this means for all of us.

David Perell (Host) 25:25.680

And if I was your editor and I was like, "Sam, what is the biggest thing that people are missing right now?" What would your answer be?

Sam Altman (CEO) 25:31.040

Well, that's why I'm not going to write the book. Uh, I I I I haven't had time to like think about that and I don't think I will need time soon. Mhm.

David Perell (Host) 25:37.720

Where did the all lowercase thing come from?

Sam Altman (CEO) 25:40.920

Um, I mean I was like I lived online as a kid and that was just I don't know I stopped using the shift key. I Do it if I'm still if I'm writing something that feels like a school paper. I just I I actually wrote something that I may do as a blog post, but it's like super long.

Sam Altman (CEO) 25:57.360

It's like 20 pages. It's way too long. Um and I may just not have time to edit it down, but it was still interesting to write. Um, but like for something like that, I still, you know, capitalize it perfectly. So it's like still in there

David Perell (Host) 26:08.060

somewhere. I like that. I may not have time to edit it down. There's something about that. That it's really the editing that takes work. Yeah, for sure. I heard a nice line from David Ogilvy. He said I'm a terrible writer, but I'm a great editor.

Sam Altman (CEO) 26:20.300

That's a real skill. That's very tough to do, especially on your own stuff.

David Perell (Host) 26:25.220

Do you get help with editing? Like is that is is that something that happens like in Google Docs here or how

Sam Altman (CEO) 26:31.020

do you think about it? The you know The things that are like written just for like an internal document, those those don't really get edit. I mean that's I I kind of write it once, maybe I read it once if if I have extra time and I'll just send it out. But for like internal

Sam Altman (CEO) 26:44.420

coordination why I think writing is super valuable. So that's not like getting edited for publication.

David Perell (Host) 26:49.700

Internal coordination, why do you use those words?

Sam Altman (CEO) 26:52.620

Oh, if like if there's like a bunch of teams that have to agree on what we're doing. I think like having a written We are like a document heavy culture in that sense. Um I think that's

David Perell (Host) 27:02.100

a good thing. Is that document heavy culture something that you got from Matt Machari?

Sam Altman (CEO) 27:07.580

No, that predated him. Predated

David Perell (Host) 27:09.220

him. Did I see that?

Sam Altman (CEO) 27:12.660

No, actually that's interesting. I think it's probably something about like the academic culture of researchers that started to hear.

David Perell (Host) 27:20.220

In what ways did people's thinking reveal themselves through the writing of YC apps?

Sam Altman (CEO) 27:26.380

The biggest thing that you that I took away most of the time is how rare clarity of expression in a YC application is. And it's rare even though we say like this is really important and it seems obvious that that's what you should try to do. But I found on the whole that people

Sam Altman (CEO) 27:49.820

who did not express themselves clearly in a YC application did not run the company in a clear way, did not explain to the team what they were doing, then explain to investors, to customers, everything else what they were doing in a clear way. And That is a very hard way to have

Sam Altman (CEO) 28:05.820

a chance of success for a company. Um so much of your job as a founder or anyone leading any kind of company is is like evangelist in chief. Mhm. And it's hard to be an effective evangelist without clear communication.

David Perell (Host) 28:26.460

When you were at White Combinator, you had a big initiative of open sourcing knowledge around a course and you wrote a book called

Sam Altman (CEO) 28:33.140

the startup the startup playbook. I would say I wrote like a pamphlet.

David Perell (Host) 28:36.660

Okay. Well, it's okay. You wrote a 50-page book, but tell me about why you did that and the process of writing the book.

Sam Altman (CEO) 28:44.300

Um, I think getting the knowledge out about how to do startups is just like a clear net win for the world. It's not the most important part of what YC does, like the the one-on-one mentoring support the network, that's all more important, but putting the knowledge out there is

Sam Altman (CEO) 29:00.220

is I think a good and easy thing to do.

David Perell (Host) 29:03.540

And what is something that you learned while running YC that you feel like really influences the way that you run open AI?

Sam Altman (CEO) 29:12.340

A big part of YC was just like encouraging founders to be more ambitious and to like kind of go after what they believe in and I think there's a lot of that in the company too.

David Perell (Host) 29:23.140

What is something that you're excited to do with your writing with GPT that you can't do now?

Sam Altman (CEO) 29:30.660

The thing that I have been thinking about is uh how can I use ChatGPT to just like make writing feel higher volume and lower stakes? Like how I still like if I have to go write like a 10-page thing that still feels like a huge thing to have to go do. And there's like a lot of

Sam Altman (CEO) 29:51.340

activation energy I have to like write wait time and like the right mood and then I have like hours of uninterrupted focus. And if if if using ChatGPT and I haven't figured this out yet but I've been thinking about it Can somehow mean like it's the kind of thing I do when I'm

Sam Altman (CEO) 30:05.180

like in an Uber for 15 minutes because it just makes the activation energy that low. That would be very cool.

David Perell (Host) 30:12.180

How can GPT amplify different personalities? You know, one of the things I like to use it for is hey rewrite this in the style of Amir tolls or Tyler Cowen. How can GPT continue to do that?

Sam Altman (CEO) 30:26.340

Well, future future versions of GPT will be very capable of that. What the fair thing to Tyler Cole is in that case, we're trying to figure out. Um, so it's like not an obvious question. Um, but for sure what everybody agrees on is there there can be many personalities that are

Sam Altman (CEO) 30:50.660

not based on real people. And that's a cool thing to have. And the fact that you can have call let's call them like personas. You can have like Chachi BT We mix things in different personas. I think that'll be helpful in the creative process. Um,

Sam Altman (CEO) 31:08.260

the thing that I hope for more than anything else out of ChatGPT and transformations is that it will be a tool that lets us do things we just couldn't do before, think of ideas we just couldn't have before. Be more creative than we could be before. And this is kind of the

Sam Altman (CEO) 31:30.600

archive technology, but I think this is a going to be a particularly great example of it.

David Perell (Host) 31:36.560

Creativity not limited by skills but by the ability to think of the idea in the first

Sam Altman (CEO) 31:41.000

And place not even that like if these tools like can help you think of the idea but you have got to have you've got to be a great curator like I don't know exactly what it's going to be like. Um but I do know people are going to get very good at using the tool like they do with

Sam Altman (CEO) 31:55.680

any new tool and that will expand the realm of human possibility.

David Perell (Host) 32:01.520

Hey, I want to tell you about a new site that I built called writing examples. We take writers like Steinbeck, Orwell, Seinfeld and break down what makes their writing so good. If that sounds like it's kind of your thing. We'll go to writingexamples.com. And if you go there, you

David Perell (Host) 32:19.600

enter your email, I'll send you my three favorite editions right away. All right, back to the episode.

Sam Altman (CEO) 32:27.160

One of the things that I really admire about you is how deliberate you are about thinking, about what to work on. And I'm curious how you thought about your choice to work on AGI. And what that process of envisioning that one thing that you're going to focus on? was all about.

Sam Altman (CEO) 32:46.480

Your process is the right word for it, right? Like it all of these things sort of start as these like almost jokes. Not quite a joke, but like a a sort of like somewhat ridiculous idea. Um at the now working on AGI seems like the obvious only decision for me at least. Um but at

Sam Altman (CEO) 33:03.000

the time it seemed like a pipe drain.

Sam Altman (CEO) 33:05.600

But I think ideas in general are very fragile. Good ideas, the best ideas are extremely fragile. And There is an unbelievable amount of value in figuring out a setup, a method, whatever you want to call it for not killing very fragile but potentially very great ideas. This comes

Sam Altman (CEO) 33:25.960

down to like how you think about it, what your process to make a decision is. It comes down to like who you surround yourself with. I think a particular kind of toxicity to avoid are the people who are like so smart they understand why every great idea is bad.

Sam Altman (CEO) 33:42.480

But I think in the the very early days the main thing is not to accidentally kill good ideas.

David Perell (Host) 33:49.880

So tell me about fragility and how writing factors into this.

Sam Altman (CEO) 33:55.240

The thing that is most important to me personally about writing is like externalized thinking and organization, magnification, whatever you want to call it of vague ideas. I find it astonishing how much writing just for yourself uh sometimes for a small group of other people

Sam Altman (CEO) 34:16.320

you're exploring an idea with, but mostly writing just for yourself helps clarify what you actually think helps like sharpen stuff in a way that for me and I think for a lot of other people is somehow impossible to do just like thinking carefully on a long

David Perell (Host) 34:32.040

hike. Like in your

Sam Altman (CEO) 34:33.080

head. Yeah, it's harder to hide really messy thinking when you have to actually write it down and look at like stare at

David Perell (Host) 34:39.000

it. So tell me more about the process. As you thought about your plan in the early days of Open AI I in terms of focusing on this, what was the sort of final output of that process where you said, "Let's do it."

Sam Altman (CEO) 34:52.240

I do remember intermediate stages where it was like talk to like a bunch of people, uh have all these ideas write out like okay, here's what we're going to do. Like here's our here's our plan. You would write some of those down and it would be like very obvious to you

Sam Altman (CEO) 35:06.320

immediately. Like okay, this actually

David Perell (Host) 35:08.240

makes

Sam Altman (CEO) 35:09.040

you feel it. You feel you feel it or you think it through and when you when you stare at it like it's one thing to like like have a couple of beers with some friends and say, "We're going to build AGI." Um and it's another to say like, "Okay, here's like here's like a full

Sam Altman (CEO) 35:26.000

cohesive plan for what it's

Sam Altman (CEO) 35:27.080

going to look like." And that makes some of the bullshit fall away. Um so many of those we'd write out as we were thinking through the different things we could do and how we would It's going to be an organization, you know, we're all going to go join some university research

Sam Altman (CEO) 35:39.240

lab like that helped get rid of some of the silliness. And again, now it all seems so obvious that this feels weird to even say. Because like of course this is what we're going

Sam Altman (CEO) 35:46.120

to do. Right. But at the time it was deeply non-obvious or a lot of other people would have been doing it. That would be sort of my like evidence point for it. And then eventually if you write something down that looks like credible enough you send it around to other people. Uh

Sam Altman (CEO) 35:57.280

they have the same experience. They might rewrite it, they might edit it, but they also kind of say like all right when I have to like stare at this in black and white it's a little little different. I'm a big believer in getting like input from lots and lots of people um

Sam Altman (CEO) 36:08.840

especially on like hard questions of what to go do in the broader sense.

David Perell (Host) 36:15.640

And now, as you do annual planning and you think in one, maybe three year time frames, is that process the same, different?

Sam Altman (CEO) 36:24.320

It don't do this with like as much rigor as I should, it hasn't been annual, but maybe like every two years. I've written a document for OpenEye, I called it literally our plan.

David Perell (Host) 36:31.380

Nice.

Sam Altman (CEO) 36:32.100

And the first one was like 25 pages. And that was like lots of hours of talking to people getting feedback, but it was like a sharpening process the whole thing. There was then one later that was like 15. There was then one that was like four. I believe we could do like a half

Sam Altman (CEO) 36:46.060

page version now. And I think that's like a good that's a that's a great sign of progress. Yeah.

David Perell (Host) 36:51.940

How much write are you doing day-to-day now?

Sam Altman (CEO) 36:54.220

Every weekend, I mean every weekend I'll like write something and Usually share it with like 10 people internally or something just like here's a thing I've been thinking about that we should do. I have been working on something I actually plan to publish which is rare for me

Sam Altman (CEO) 37:07.020

now about just sort of what the world looks like if we get AI driven abundance and like why that's important. But it's like it's a long way to go.

David Perell (Host) 37:18.660

As you think about how AI is going to change writing, you know, what are comparatively what skills are going to be more valuable versus less valuable?

Sam Altman (CEO) 37:28.060

In a world where like AI can do lots of things for you, having great ideas, knowing what you want the AI to do and AI can do anything is really important. Taste, creation, like expert level, you know, like whatever it is that PG does, Yeah. that's going to be super valuable. I

Sam Altman (CEO) 37:43.420

love using ChatGPT to help me write something, um especially like as I've been trying to write this thing. If I get like stuck, it's a sort of like super Thesaurus. If I just can't figure out how to phrase something I'm like struggling with something that like just can't get

Sam Altman (CEO) 38:00.860

something to flow. But it's definitely not like going to replace coming up with the ideas anytime soon. It's an incredible tool for writers, like incredible tool for writers, but definitely not a writer.

David Perell (Host) 38:12.740

Like a sparring partner. Like a collaborator, like someone you can like give like a subtask to.

David Perell (Host) 38:18.580

Yeah. That's a lot of how I use it is a lot of times I have a word that I'm struggling with and I'll say, "Give me 10 words that would work in this sentence." And then take the sentence, quote it, and then it'll give me the output. It's really good at that.

Sam Altman (CEO) 38:33.180

Yeah. Yeah.

David Perell (Host) 38:34.100

How do you think that we should be training writers differently in the ChatGPT world? I heard this story once. I don't I don't know if it's true or not, but it was like some creative writing teacher. They would have these students come and you know the first day or whatever

David Perell (Host) 38:48.220

she'd like give an assignment which is write the first paragraph of your novel and people would come in with all of the standard like freshman and college mistakes. like, you know, way too many like stretched metaphors, way too much like flowery language. Um, and then she'd go

David Perell (Host) 39:05.100

through this like exercise of I think a standard one first which is cut one metaphor from every page. Cut one unnecessary word from every sentence. Cut this, cut that, cut that. You take this like 10-page thing down and you cut it down to one page and it would like it would not

David Perell (Host) 39:21.540

be so tortuously over written. And then the class would read them and they would say like, "Okay, what happened?" happened here? I like, what's that? And the answer was there was like no story at all. There was the the instinct was try to like write this like beautifully

David Perell (Host) 39:38.060

whatever kind of satisfying to write thing, but it's no fun to read. Like the readers want a story. Yeah. And the thing from this like teacher is that we might teach people to write beautifully, but uh there's there's no interesting story. On the other hand, you have these like

David Perell (Host) 39:56.220

sort of mass massive mass market successful. I don't even know what. Like I'll pick on like the Twilight books or something. Quite interesting story. Horrible writing. Sure. And the question is like, can we make it easier to get both? And can we teach people how to use these

David Perell (Host) 40:13.420

tools? Do you have a sense for how good ChatGPT storytelling is? Like if I turn on voice mode and read it to a kid, how much better is that versus mom? I think the storytelling is not yet very good, but I would expect it to get better. We're still at a place where the models are

David Perell (Host) 40:29.060

just generally improving so much. I mean there's areas that we could push on that'd be better for storytelling, but if the model just gets a lot smarter and also if we train it to be better at storytelling, um that will help. How do you do that? You show it a bunch of examples

David Perell (Host) 40:43.860

of what makes a good story and what makes a bad story, which I don't think it's like magic. I think we really understand that well now we just haven't tried to do that, yeah. When you're sitting down to write and you're thinking about creating a focus state What is it that

David Perell (Host) 40:57.940

you're doing in your process to really create that? I used to think like oh I got to get in the perfect place and I got to like set a time that I'm going to like go to this coffee shop and put on my noise cancelling headphones and I'm going to be in a right there. And now I will

David Perell (Host) 41:10.260

take any 11 minutes uninterrupted that I can get like sitting in the back of a car laying in bed like whatever it is. I mean if I do have like if I had like a perfect thing it would be like you know Saturday morning with a cup of coffee and nothing scheduled. And that is great

David Perell (Host) 41:27.220

like a I got to sit down and like if I have to write like a long thing, I will try to set that up. But most of it happens in like short chunks in the back of a car. You know what I use a lot is I use the voice feature. I take it and I ask it to just clean it up and I find

David Perell (Host) 41:44.160

ChatGPT to be so helpful with that because I'm much more generative with my mouth than I am with my fingertips. Interesting, for me it's the opposite. Really? Yeah. I'm convinced there's ideas I would never have sitting and talking with people that I just need to sit and type

David Perell (Host) 41:59.280

for. This is like obviously a very common observation but but figuring out like the right amount of being with people talking you know getting exposed to like a lot of ideas and then having some time alone to think, to write, to just sort of like do some deep work, whatever that

David Perell (Host) 42:19.080

is. I think obviously this is a super important pattern to a lot of people, definitely to me. My sort of like roughly rough rhythm is I'm like, you know, in the office kind of non-stop all week. Uh, I have no time to think. It's just like kind of crazy packed. And then on the

David Perell (Host) 42:34.840

weekends I have like long quiet blocks and I'm not really around people and uh that cycle is very important to me. And is that fractal? Like do you sometimes take a few weeks off or anything like that? I used to. I think that's like really good. Like when I've taken like long

David Perell (Host) 42:50.720

chunks of time off, I would do like a month of like non-stop hanging out with people and then like a month of, you know, being in the woods on the beach whatever. That doesn't really happen anymore. Yeah. Do you take notes during the week that you reflect on or is it just Yes.

David Perell (Host) 43:03.480

on your No, I'm a huge notebook. Oh, tell me about that. There's all these like fancy notebooks in the world. You don't want those. Um, you definitely want to viral notebook because one thing that's important is you can rip pages out frequently and you also want it to lie like

David Perell (Host) 43:16.080

flat and open on the table. And if you like open pages, you want them to like, you know, like be able to lay like this whatever. You definitely want to be able to like rip pages out. I'm a big believer of like I take a bunch of notes and then I like clearly like rip them out so

David Perell (Host) 43:29.680

I can look at multiple pages at the same time and I can like crumple them up and throw them on the floor and I'm done like when our house cleaner comes in on like a, you know, whatever. There's just just these pile of couple papers that I'm like type my notes in or whatever on

David Perell (Host) 43:42.960

the floor. You definitely want like a kind of paper that is like good to write on which is a feel thing but most paper is terrible to write on. Um you want hard front and back to the notepad so and you also want something that can fit in a pocket. I think the Uniball micro .5

David Perell (Host) 44:03.640

pen is the best pen overall but the Muji .36 for points 37 in dark blue ink is a very nice pen for other reasons. Uh so those are the two I would use, but I think this kind of notebook and one of those two pens is the right answer. And how many notes you're writing per day on

David Perell (Host) 44:21.600

that thing? Uh I go through one of these like every three two or three weeks. Oh wow, so you're taking a lot of Well, this you can see how much I've ripped out. Like this used to have like 100 pages in it or something. So that's how you think about it. So you're going to

David Perell (Host) 44:33.000

basically take the notebook and then you rip out the pages Pretty and you much don't have completed notebooks. I don't have completed notebooks. Wow. What inspired this? Where does this come from. Lots of trial and error, uh many kinds of notebooks, many pens, many different

David Perell (Host) 44:43.960

systems. This one's really good. Another thing I've been thinking about when it comes to the influence of AGI on creative mediums is just the competence with the written word is going up so much. And here's what I mean. There's now, you know, with Sora, you can create videos

David Perell (Host) 45:00.080

using text as the input. You can do that with music. You can do that with images. And that's a big change in terms of the influence on of writing on our world. Again, for me like writing is a tool for thinking most importantly and I don't think that's going anywhere and so I

David Perell (Host) 45:15.320

think it's like it's really important that people still learn to write for this reason in the same way that even if there's going to be like less traditional coding jobs coding is a great way to learn to think too. So you should still learn to code. So when you say it's

David Perell (Host) 45:28.480

important that people learn to write what does that mean? What it means to me is that I like figured out this tool to think more clearly. Now if there's a better way to think more clearly I great I would switch to that. definitely not found that yet. A final question that we can

David Perell (Host) 45:43.440

close with is there's just a lot of people out there who are saying that AI is going to kill writing and they're angry about it about it and what do you make of that? I don't see any evidence whatsoever that AI seems to be killing writing. I mean there's like a lot of bad AI

David Perell (Host) 45:57.080

writing like plastered over the internet. Um and there's like a lot of like bad student assignments that have probably been written by AI. But I don't think anyone's serious. I don't think Paul Graham is sitting around being like AI is going to you know, kill my writing here. I

David Perell (Host) 46:11.800

think it would have to be like full super intelligence before I was like, okay, this is going to replace human writing full stop and we have much bigger issues to worry about at that point. Even if that happened, um let's say we have a system that can write better than a human,

David Perell (Host) 46:28.840

uh do you think that the most popular novel of 2027 has a human name on it or not? Like a human writer on it or not? I think yes. I think it does too. When I finish a great book, the first thing I go do is like I want to know about the writer. I want to know their life story.

David Perell (Host) 46:48.280

And I don't think I'll ever have that feeling to like AI writing. um there there's there is something about you read an incredible book and you kind of you could connect to a person even though you don't literally know them. You feel like you do and you feel like you have this

David Perell (Host) 47:04.500

important shared human experience and that is like some significant percentage of the enjoyment of a great book to me. And I bet we'd keep doing that. All right, Sam. All right. Thank you very much. This was fun. This was fun.