[MUSIC PLAYING] JORGE CUETO: Hi, everyone. Welcome to our Talks
at Google event. I'm going to go through
some logistics first. This is a fire side
chat style talk. So it will take about 40 minutes
to talk through some questions. And then in the last 20 minutes,
we'll open up to the audience to submit questions, both
in person here through a mic in the back of the room and also
through the Dory at go/ask-sam. And I'd like to thank
everyone who has helped out to make this talk possible,
including our facilities team and everyone on the PM
speaker series organizing team. So it's great to have Sam
Altman here with us today for Talks at Google. Sam is the President
of Y Combinator, which is widely regarded as
one of the top startup incubators in Silicon Valley. He went to Stanford and
studied computer science and was the founder and CEO of
a mobile location-based startup called Loopt, which was
funded by YC as part of its first class
of startups in 2005 and acquired by a financial
services company Green Dot in 2012. In 2014, he was named
president of Y Combinator. And since then, he's worked
on a wide range of initiatives from YC Research, which is
a non-profit branch of Y Combinator that focuses
on doing pure research around moon-shot ideas,
like universal basic income. And he's also worked on OpenAI,
which is a non-profit AI research company looking
into finding ways to create safe, friendly
artificial intelligence that can actually help
all of humanity. And it's great to have you here. SAM ALTMAN: Thanks
for having me. JORGE CUETO: So
just as I mentioned, you're involved in a wide range
of things from YC to OpenAI. And most recently, you
released The United Slate So I wanted to ask you how
you think about prioritizing the projects that you work on. SAM ALTMAN: You know, I
think optimal time allocation is probably like an
AI complete problem. I think if you can get to
spending like 1% of your time perfectly, that's really good. And so I think this idea of
figuring out what to focus on and what not to focus on is
both really hard and still significantly under-invested in. The frameworks that
I have used, the sort of two big frameworks that
I've used to figure out how to allocate time, one
is impact maximization slash regret minimisation. So I try to look at those
two curves together. And I try to think about
where I can have the biggest net impact on the world, net
positive impact on the world. Easy to have a big impact. And then, also, just
regret minimization. You know, you get to live once. It's really important that
you do what you want to do and that you spend time
with the people you'd like to work with and
work on the things that you find
personally fulfilling. And so if I think I'm going to
really regret doing something or regret not doing
something, even if I think it's not the best
use of my time for a pure sort of net impact on
the world, I'm still willing to take that
really seriously. And I think that
makes me do better at the things I do
that do help the world. So you know, the
broad things that I've learned that I like to do-- one is teach people. Another is create
economic growth. I really do believe that one
of the things that is most fundamentally going wrong
right now in the country is that we don't have
enough economic growth. And the little that we do is
not evenly distributed at all. And so I think in a
democracy you really want everyone's lives to
get better every year. We're basically insensitive
to the absolute quality of our lives and
extremely sensitive to relative differences year
over year to our neighbors. And it's really important
that everyone's life is getting better constantly. And I think economic growth
is important in that. I think that AI is
going to be the most important technological
trend of our lifetime. So I spend a lot
of my time on that. And you know, I try
to think about things on those two strategies. The other framework besides the
sort of impact maximization, regret minimization that
I found really useful is spend a little bit of
effort trying a lot of things, and then relentlessly prune
down and focus quickly on the ones that you
like and the ones that seem to be working. So in some sense, this is the Y
Combinator model of fund a lot of startups with a
little bit of money. And then, you know,
most don't work out, and some work really well. You spend more time and more
money on the ones that do. Hey, guys. This is the thing that I've
tried to apply to my life more generally is this idea that
I can try a lot of things with a little bit of effort. It's very hard to predict
exactly what's going to work and what hasn't. But then the hard
part about that, the thing that most
people don't do, is you really want to
relentlessly focus down on the ones that do work. And the last thing I'll
say about prioritization is the other hack
I have learned is if you can get one really
great partner with you on every project, that will
cover up a lot of the slack. Because if you try to do
multiple things at once, crises come at the same times. And that's really hard if you
have to do it all yourself. JORGE CUETO: And focusing
more specifically on productivity, what
are some life hacks maybe you apply to make your
everyday more productive? SAM ALTMAN: I mean,
I think there's like a lot of crap written
about productivity, secrets on the internet. And people sort of like
get into this thing where they spend
more time trying to be productive about
their productivity system than actually
getting things done. Well, say two, I
think, pieces of advice that aren't that obvious. One is, I think,
far more important than any particular system
is just figuring out the right things to work on. And so all of the
time that people spend with this new
productivity app or that or whatever would
be better spent like really trying to
think diligently about I have the same number of
hours as anybody else. What am I going
to spend them on? And getting that right is
more important than exactly like being perfectly
productive with those hours. A big part of that is not
doing things that waste time. I think if you can just focus
on the things that are important and not do the things
that waste time, you can be fairly sloppy
with productivity otherwise, and you'll still get far
more done than most people. It's really hard to do, though. The other thing that I think
people don't think about enough is figuring out your
own personal rhythms of productivity. And there's huge
variance, I've noticed, between people that
figured this out and don't. So for me personally,
it turns out that I am most productive if I
go to sleep late, wake up late, and then keep the first like
three or four hours of the day and don't schedule any
meetings, like work from home, get there my list of
stuff then, and then pack all my meetings when I'm kind
of less productive at just grinding stuff out or thinking
creatively in the afternoon. And it took me some number
of years to figure out, because it didn't fit
well with the work schedule I was naturally in. But then I was like, all right. If this is the thing that
makes me most productive, then I'm going to make my whole
schedule work to support that. And that was a really
important change for me. So I think figuring out your
own personal optimal times to work on what kind
of different things, people don't really
talk about that much. And at least for me,
it had a huge impact. JORGE CUETO: Shifting
gears a little bit, but still trying to get your
perspective on different things related to day to day, but
one of the key issues that has come up recently is
bias in the workplace. and both conscious
and unconscious bias. And I wanted to get
your perspective on what are some of the
strategies that you implement personally, whether in
the way you interact with people that you encounter
or in how you approach the decision making process
and using strategies to minimize your own bias. SAM ALTMAN: Look,
I think this is an important conversation
happening in Silicon Valley right now. And there's a lot of
opinions on a lot of sides. But I would just like
to say the following. I think no matter what you
believe about biology, no one that I respect does
not believe that women and racial minorities and
a number of other groups face an absolutely
unfair playing field their entire lives. I think people start getting
told directly or indirectly from the very young age this
is the kind of thing you should do or can do or whatever. And that has an effect, a
[INAUDIBLE] effect on anyone. And I think trying to counter
that is really important. And again, I think
there are things reasonable well-meaning
people can disagree on. I think, unfortunately, we
spend all of our time talking about the disagreements. And we don't focus
enough on the agreements. And I think almost all
smart, reasonable people will agree that the
society we grew up in has a hugely unfair
playing field. And I think because
of that, it is not enough to talk about
unconscious bias. I think that is a real
problem to be clear. I think we are all a product
of the society we grew up in. And we all have biases
that aren't our fault, but still have a
responsibility to counteract. But one thing I don't like
about the discussion in Silicon Valley about
unconscious bias and how that's the problem that
we need to fix is I think it is not
nearly sufficient. A good thing to fix,
but it ignores the fact that, you know, decades
or centuries of society have built up a very
uneven playing field, and that is why we do
need programs to try to proactively counter that. So you know, I think it's
really important we not lose sight of that. And that unconscious
bias training alone, although currently very
fashionable, will not fix that. That said, I do believe
unconscious bias is a problem. We try to counteract it,
A, by talking about it and doing training,
which I think does help. But B, I think one
of the things that we have done that, unfortunately,
other investors have not done as much is just have
a very diverse partnership. You know, we have six
female GPs on our team. And that's probably a large part
of the women in top investing roles in Silicon Valley. And that's really bad. We have the CEO of our
corp program is black. And I hate to play
the kind of like, who's the most
discriminated stack game. But I think black
entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley have an exceptionally hard time. And I think by having
a more diverse team, it helps us have
broader networks and also think about our own
unconscious bias all the time. JORGE CUETO: And the issue of
politics or maybe even bringing these issues of in the workplace
is sometimes seen as a taboo. And yet, you've been pretty
vocal about your views on current political events
and also other issues that are coming up
in Silicon Valley. So I wanted to ask
you how you walk that fine line between
expressing your opinions, but also minimizing
any repercussions that that could have on the
day to day business of YC. SAM ALTMAN: Well, now it's
not even controversial. You know, like now,
all the tech CEOs are talking about politics. When I started doing
it a couple of years ago kind of at the beginning
of the rise of Trump, it was controversial. Two things were going on. One is I think no one
took him seriously. So most people were
like, yeah, this is a ridiculous thing
that's going to go away. Two is that I think
in normal times, it does make sense for business
leaders of large organizations to remain apolitical. You know, I think it actually
does make a lot of sense. It's a huge distraction. It's hugely time consuming. And it has all of these,
like, weird negative effects, like you know, if you
piss off the president, he can do bad things to you. However, these are
not normal times. And I think when the future
of the republic is at risk, the duty to the
country and our values transcends the duty to
your particular company. and your stock price. And I think I started
that a little bit earlier than other people. But at this point, I'm
in very good company. And it doesn't seem to be
that controversial anymore. JORGE CUETO: What
are some things that you wish people
knew about you that they don't know about you? SAM ALTMAN: You
know, at this point, I would just like to have my own
little quiet private life back. I'll say nothing at all. JORGE CUETO: OK. Fair answer. Moving on to talking
a little bit about YC and what you look for
in companies, are there qualities in founders
that you think are overrated or underrated? SAM ALTMAN: Yeah. I think the most
underrated quality of all is being really determined. This is more important
than being smart. This is more important
than having a network. This is more important
than a great idea. The hardest thing about
starting a company is the level and the
frequency of bad stuff that happens to you. And most people that are
good in really other ways eventually just get
killed, the company gets killed, by
stuff going wrong. And you know, so much about
being a successful entrepreneur is just not giving up. When we have funded
people who have a great idea, perfect background
on paper, and a great product and still failed, it has
usually been that they're insufficiently determined. So I think this is the most
important non-obvious skill of a founder. Of course, you need a good
product and a good market and to be smart. But that's really obvious. The degree to which being
like a three or four standard deviation
outlier on determination is a required skill
of a CEO is not something that was obvious
to me when I started. That's also bad, because
it's really hard to select. It's really hard
to identify that. As we have said more publicly
how important that is, people applying to YC have
gotten better and better at telling us stories from
their past life about how they overcame these impossible
odds to get through something. And unlike intelligence, which
is very difficult to fake in a, you know, one hour
meeting, you can definitely fake determination in
a one hour meeting. So that's one thing
that really matters. Another thing that really
matters that is non-obvious is independent thought. And this I think is an
even more unusual skill than determination. I think both of these you
can make a conscious effort and build up. But I think independent thought
is one of the hardest skills to build up. Because speaking of social
pressures from birth, we are all pushed to
think like other people. And if you think
in your own lives about the number of people you
spend time with that you would say are true independent
thinkers that consistently have new ideas you haven't
heard from other people and think about the
world in different ways, it's probably a very short list. And yet, these are
the people that start all the interesting companies. The consensus idea
is everyone tries Google will eat your lunch at. And they're also not kind
of the really big trends of the future. You want startup ideas-- if you picture a Venn
diagram, and here you have is a good
idea, and here you have sounds like a bad idea, you
want that tiny little overlap. And those are the kind of
ideas that are the hardest to identify and
the ones that, even if you do manage to notice them,
most people will talk you out of. So I'd say those are two
non-obvious skills that we look for. JORGE CUETO: And
what's one challenge that YC companies face
repeatedly that you notice? SAM ALTMAN: Hiring engineers,
when Google can just sort of like throw unlimited
cash at anyone they want, has become very
problematic for startups. I think the good
thing about that-- I always try to find the
good in any bad situation. And the good thing
about this is it means that all of the
really good startups have really important missions. Eventually, they figure it out. They may not have it on day
one, but they eventually get to this, like,
missionary mindset. And it used to be that even
if you didn't have that, you could just sort of
get a bunch of mercenaries to come work for you. And now you can't, because
you can't [INAUDIBLE] Google. And so one positive side
effect of this thing has been that the importance
now of a startup having a really clear and really
important mission on day three has gone up a lot. And I think that's leading
to better startups. Because, otherwise,
you just can't recruit. Another common problem
that startups have-- and this doesn't sound
like a great insight. But most startups still
don't ever built a product that people want. And it doesn't seem to matter
how much we talk about this. It doesn't seem to matter how
much anyone talks about this. People still keep trying
to do anything but this. And if there's one thing that
a startup has to get right, it's build a product that people
really want, not a little. If they want it a
little bit, then you won't generate enough momentum. Like, you've got
to build something that some people really love. And after failing, because
of insufficiently determined founders, this is
the number two reason that startups that seem
really good otherwise fail. JORGE CUETO: Moving
on to talking about different
technologies, what would you say is the
biggest challenge that we're facing in
terms of making progress on artificial
intelligence right now? SAM ALTMAN: Well, I don't
know if any of you saw this, but OpenAI beat the best
single player DotA players in the world last Friday. And when we started that project
at the beginning of this year, I did not think that was
going to happen this year. And I wasn't even sure it was
going to happen next year. And it was very wild
to watch that happen. Because it was almost
purely self-training. And it was this very
complex environment. And the AI was just
playing itself and getting better and better and better. In fact, the final bot that we
had that beat all the humans handily, one day later, it lost
60-40 to a one-day-more evolved version of itself,
just to give you a sense for the
rate of improvement. And so I think people are kind
of asleep at the wheel here. There are problems. But again, in the same
spirit of always trying to figure out the
good, not the bad, we are making unbelievable
progress, maybe too much progress. But I think of all the
things I worry about with AI, the technical
barriers to progress are not the top of the list. JORGE CUETO:
There's another camp that says that maybe we're
placing too much emphasis on the threat of AI. What do you think about that? SAM ALTMAN: Yeah, I think
we don't talk enough about the benefits. I think that AI
has the potential to eliminate nearly
all human suffering in the next couple of decades. I think we can have
a world of abundance. We can eliminate
poverty over time. We can probably cure a
whole lot of diseases. There all these wonderful
things that technology can do. I think we're
already seeing that in just how much better a
lot of consumer products we use everyday have gotten. People like disaster porn. People are more
interested in talking about the end of the world than
they are about life getting 10% better every year and
having that compound, which gets a lot better. So you know, if
you're a journalist, you can write an
article about how AI is going to end the world
and get a lot of clicks and, you know, a page view
bonus or whatever you get. Or, you can write an article
about how AI is gradually making all these
problems 10% better. And probably no one reads it. Certainly, no one shares it. And so I think, for whatever
reason, the way we're wired is to talk much more
about the downside of this than the upside. But the upside I think
is going to be huge. It already is huge. JORGE CUETO: And what do you
think about cryptocurrencies? Do you see the same growth? SAM ALTMAN: Yeah. I mean, I think it's
going to go up and down. Like I bought my
bitcoin a long time ago. I plan to hold them
for a really long time. I try not to watch
the price ticks, but it's so addicting
that I can't help myself. I think-- this is not
investment advice. I think the only super
compelling proven use case we have seen so
far is store value. And as a replacement
for gold, I think we are seeing real
adoption there and real collective
belief that actually makes it have some value. However, if that's how
it's going to play out, then I think bitcoin
should dominate-- biggest network, first biggest
brand, most collective belief, whatever. And so I have been surprised
by the continual strength on all of the altcoins. I think there are potential
other truly valuable applications of the blockchain. Filecoin is a YC thing, so
I know that one pretty well. And I can see that being big. But I think most of what's
going on, outside of bitcoin, feels like a complete
speculative bubble. And I feel bad that a lot of
people are going to get burned. So I think probably
the right thing to do, if you believe in it,
is to buy bitcoin, and then not think about
it for another five years. JORGE CUETO: Is there
any specific product area or technology that you
think people are sleeping on? SAM ALTMAN: Sure, a lot. AI, as we mentioned,
I think people are asleep at the wheel
on a really big way on. Nuclear fusion, I think,
is within some single digit number of years of working. And because it's been
so bad for so long, people are just kind of burned
out and not really taking a new look at new materials
and stronger magnets and better computer
models that's going to enable this to work. Synthetic biology-- again, it's
like people talked about it a lot a couple of years ago. It didn't quite work as
fast as people were hoping. So we have like this hype cycle,
and then it really falls off. And now, we're in the part where
I think the interesting work is happening. And people aren't
paying enough attention. I guess, that's a topic I
can go on for a long time. But I'll limit it to three. JORGE CUETO: Sure. Is there any particular
problem that you think technology can't solve? SAM ALTMAN: How to make us
nice to each other technology has clearly been
quite bad at solving. I won't say it can't. But I haven't seen it
yet, and I certainly don't think technology
can by itself. And I think we are kind
of in the situation, at least in the
developed world, where the world keeps getting better,
and we keep getting unhappier. And you know, there's like a
decent amount of data on this. And I think technology
is not entirely to blame, but it's certainly
not blameless. And I think 30 minutes
left, I couldn't even start the conversation. But I think the number
of things that technology has done to make
us more isolated, feeling relatively worse-- a friend of mine
a little bit older said she never
used to be unhappy. Because she had no idea
what she was missing. And now that she
has to watch, like-- I'm very bad a pop
culture, I'm going to pick a name at random-- Kim Kardashian fly around
in private jets on Instagram all day, she's jealous. And it makes her very unhappy. And it didn't used to happen. And I've been thinking
about that a lot in the last couple of weeks. And I don't have a
solution to that. But I understand why
that's a problem. So I think figuring out how
to make us happier and nicer to each other in particular, I
think one thing that technology does that's really bad
is we have some probably long-standing evolutionary
pressure that even if I really don't like you, I'm
very unlikely to come stand next to you and
say, I fucking hate you. You're a jerk,
you know, whatever else people say on Twitter. JORGE CUETO: A lot of things. SAM ALTMAN: Because we're
like these pack animals. And we have to live
with each other and help each other survive. But somehow on Twitter,
that goes away. And I think I'll save my
whole rant about Twitter. But I think that is a
platform in particular that rewards saying the most
aggressive snarky things. That's how you get likes
and re-tweets and sort of value out of the platform. But a lot of
technology does this. We don't have whatever
kind of the human, being nice to each other
in person, instinct is. And we have these platforms
that reward being bad, reward being a jerk. And so I think
I'm not optimistic that technology is going
to solve that problem. I think that's going to have to
be people solving that problem. JORGE CUETO: In an interview
with "Vanity Fair" in 2015, you mentioned that you were
optimistic about the future. And that was right before all
of the election stuff happened and the situation that
we find ourselves in. So would you say
that you're still optimistic about the future? SAM ALTMAN: Yeah, of
course, of course. Like, progress, it's not a
perfectly exponential curve. It's not even a straight line. And you know, we are clearly
in a challenging period now. But I think if you look back
at the last few hundred, and then few thousand
years, if you zoom out enough, the squiggles on
the curve kind of disappear. The world's getting
so much better. And I think that's
going to keep happening. And even with everything
going on right now, I'm delighted to
be alive right now and not 100 years
ago, and certainly not 200 or 2,000 years ago. And I think we do have
technology to thank for a lot. And we have better governance. Like, the number of people
living in an democracy, you know, 200 years ago was
very low, the percentage. And as horrible as
things are, the fact that we get to stand up and
speak our minds without fear of being thrown in jail
for political opposition and the fact that we get to vote
again in 3 and 1/2 more years, I think that's amazing. And I think it's easy to
take that for granted. But yeah, I think the future
is going to be a lot better. I remain very optimistic. JORGE CUETO: What do you
see as being a big challenge that we're facing as
a society right now? SAM ALTMAN: How we
deal with a world where the natural forces are
for wealth to concentrate into the hands of a smaller
and smaller number of people. As I mentioned
earlier, I think people are more sensitive to
relative quality of life than absolute quality of life. And I think technology
is naturally a force. It's a giant lever
that tends to create way more wealth, but
really concentrated. So I think one of the most
tone deaf things people say in Silicon Valley is, you know,
poor people should be happy. They get this Android
phone for not much money. They can access
anything in the world. And they wouldn't
have that without us, so why are they complaining? And OK, like there is
some truth to that. I do think it is
cool about the world that the richest
person and someone living in an absolute poverty
carry around the same phone. There was no analogy to
that other than maybe like if you got a
really bad disease. There was no like
equality like that, you know, 400, 500 years ago. However, that point,
which is always what Silicon Valley
falls back to, I think is like maybe not the most
tone deaf possible response, but up there. Like people want to feel
like they have agency. They want to feel like they
have a voice in the future. They want to feel like
they can participate. And they want to
feel like they're not just kind of like given this
baseline, while like they toil in the provinces
and Silicon Valley just gets all the money. And I think people who don't
see that are just not thinking clearly. And so I think one of
the greatest threats-- something else I don't think
technology can fix on its own-- is how we get to
a more just world. I really, really
fundamentally believe that economic justice is
the most important thing you can do for social justice. And if you have all
of the resources going to a small set of people, even
if everybody else is having their absolute quality of
life raised very quickly, that's not enough. JORGE CUETO: You recently
announced The United Slate, which puts forth some
policy proposals as well as an invitation for candidates. What would you say success
looks like for that? SAM ALTMAN: You
know, if we could run five, six candidates in
the 2018 cycle on that platform and have two of them
win their elections, I think that'd be
an incredible start. And you know, maybe it
doesn't work at all. Because maybe those
issues, although I believe they're
important, are not yet ready to convince
the public at large. But I think it will
be a good start. And I think over time
it will be really good if people on the
progressive side built up a kind of
long-term organization focusing on winning elections
and shifting public perception at all levels. The right has done a
fabulous job with this. Congratulations to any of
you who are on that side. But I would like the left
to do a better job at that. I don't think we're putting
forward our best game there. JORGE CUETO: In your
invitation, you also mentioned that you would be willing
to work with Democrats, Independents, and Republicans. Is there any issue in particular
that you see anyone, regardless of political ideology, coming
together and agreeing on more so than other issues? SAM ALTMAN: I think there
are a lot of issues. Again, I think people agree on
way more than they disagree on. You know, as we went
around the state and talked to Californians,
Republicans, Democrats, San Francisco, LA, Fresno,
Shasta County, wherever you go, the price of housing is like
the biggest issue for most sort of regular people that are
not Google employees, maybe even for Google employees. It's really, really bad. I mean, this is if you could
fix I think one thing that would have hugely positive
secondary effects, it's bring the cost of housing
down by a factor of 10. It'd be transformative
for society. It's a-- AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]
government regulation? SAM ALTMAN: What? AUDIENCE: Eliminate
government regulations. SAM ALTMAN: Eliminate
government regulations? AUDIENCE: Five stories. SAM ALTMAN: Yeah. Like, I think many regulations
have good elements. I'm not kind of the
libertarian, anarchist, all government
regulations are bad. But I do think that the sort of
no more building, no building taller, has been
disastrous for the state. And I think it is the
worst possible allocation of resources to have people tie
up every free penny they can find into the place they live. Think about anything else
we could spend that on. Think about what
it would be like if people could live
close to where they work rather than
commuting an hour and a half to get here each day. And that is something that
Democrats, Republicans, Independents, almost
everybody agrees on, or at least there are people
in all of those camps that do. So I think like, again, easy
to talk about the divisions. It's really good that when
you talk to regular people, they all agree on what the
most important issue is. And they all want to
fix it in the state. JORGE CUETO: What do you think
the tech industries role is in government and politics? SAM ALTMAN: Look, I think we are
all citizens of this country. And we all have, like-- you know, there is a
right to participate in the electoral process. And I think there's
also a duty to do that. And I think tech is
going through such a boom right now it is
easy to say, hey, I'm just going to focus
on, like, doing my thing, building products, making
money, and whatever. And I'm going to let someone
else take care of the rest. One of the kind of
disappointing things that I have learned
as I've gotten to spend more and more time with
increasingly influential people and kind of how the world
works is that there is no plan. And there is no group
figuring out everything. And it's kind of
up to all of us. Everyone hopes. Like, the reason
conspiracy theories are so appealing
is that everybody wants there to be a conspiracy. You want to think that someone
has a plan, that, you know, there's all this
stuff happening. But someone's got
a centralized plan, and it's all going to work out. And I think one of the sad
realizations of growing up is that there are no grownups. No one has this master plan. And if we don't
participate, the thing can just go off the rails. JORGE CUETO: What
do you think are some of the most effective ways
for employees at a large tech company, like Google,
to get involved in government and politics? SAM ALTMAN: Everyone wants an
answer other than this one, because it would
be more convenient. But I think one of the answers
is to just run for office. We have this process. We have this system,
set of rules, that we've all agreed to. And everyone wants some way to
act around the edges of that rather than just
participate directly. And that's OK. There are good things to do. But I think just taking
the problem head on, not enough people try that. JORGE CUETO: And there's
rumors going around that Mark Zuckerberg is
going to run for office, like, every other week. And then there's
also been rumors about you running for governor. And we've seen tech people
run for office in the past. Meg Whitman ran for governor
of California in 2010. But she lost by a significant
margin to Jerry Brown. So my question is, do you
think that it's actually feasible for someone in tech
to run for office and win? Or is there too much of this
perception of the tech industry as being elitist,
such that people won't connect with voters? SAM ALTMAN: I think there is. I think, at least,
people should try. I think the tech industry is
the most hated in the Bay Area. And if you go out
throughout the rest of the state or the
country, there's a lot of people who
think it's really cool. They aspire to it. They want to participate in it. And I think it is easy to get
too negative a view of how technology people
are perceived here. I don't know if a tech person
can win the presidency. I have a feeling we're
going to find out. But what I am confident about is
that people from the technology industry could start winning
local school board and city council and, you know,
congressional seats. And that would be a great
thing to start with. JORGE CUETO: Is there
any person currently living that you would
want to run for president? Who's your ideal candidate? SAM ALTMAN: Ideal? I can't answer that on the fly. That's a good question
to think about. When you said that,
I was like, oh, I should figure out who
that person is and go try to convince them to run. But I don't have an answer
ready to go in my head. JORGE CUETO: OK. Well, with that, I'm going to
open up the floor for audience questions. So if you have a
question, feel free to go to the mic in the
back of the room, or also submit your
question to the Dory. AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE] Hi. You mentioned the
anecdote about your friend being unhappy and
Kim Kardashian. And it reminded me of a quote. And it said, people
aren't unhappy, because they want to be happy. They're unhappy, because
they want to be happier than other people. And you mentioned that
technology may or may not be able to solve this. So I'd like to hear some of
your ideas or success strategies on how to solve this on
a micro and macro level, whether it be
delete Twitter to-- SAM ALTMAN: That's
a good thing to do. That's a good thing to do. Yeah. I deleted all the social
apps from my phone. And yeah, I can still check
them on my computer when I want. But I don't have
that constant urge to push button for
dopamine hit here. And that's been really good. You know, I think after talking
to a bunch of these people about the things that
make people happy, there's the obvious
stuff, which is like spend time with
loved ones that everyone knows even if they don't do. But there's a bunch
of things that are less obvious to me that seem
to have huge measured effects. Like taking time to think
about the things that went well as opposed to things
you're upset about, or going for a walk outside
everyday no matter what. And I think as we get sort
of to abundance and unlimited resources, this is going to
be a more important topic. What I would encourage you to do
is to just like start reading. There's a lot of
literature on the subject. No one seems to care about
it enough to spend time. But I would say
start reading it. And hopefully, I'll finish
my blog post on it soon. Thank you. AUDIENCE: Hey, Sam. Thanks for coming. I wanted to ask a question
about the larger landscape of VC in general. I heard a rumor that YC is
looking to a growth fund. I think it broke on
TechCrunch like month ago, like potentially
raising $1 billion fund. I wanted to get your
thoughts on growth versus venture and how you see
growth evolving for the Bay Area in general. You see private
companies staying private longer and longer. SAM ALTMAN: So we already
have a growth fund. It's called YC Continuity. We raised the first one in 2015. It's about halfway invested. And it basically follows on
in capital in YC companies. One of the things that I
wanted to do after I joined YC was start to fund
hard tech companies, nuclear fusion, something like
biology quantum computing, self-driving cars-- long list. And one of the good
things that I realized is that nobody else was
funding those companies. And so we could have our pick. One of the bad things
that I realized is nobody else was
funding those companies. And so we could fund
them all we wanted, and there was no
follow on capital. So that was actually the
genesis for our growth fund is that there was this
class of companies that I think are really
important and really valuable. And they weren't getting funded. Since then, we've
expanded it, and we fund lots of other companies. I will certainly
say that there is no shortage of growth
capital for software companies in Silicon Valley. You know, it may
have gotten harder to raise a seed or an A round. It probably has somewhat. But if you have things
working, like when you want to go
raise a B or C round and you have this beautiful
exponential growth, you will not be able to keep up
with the number of term sheets you're getting. That is the stage
that I think just has a huge amount of
capital allocated to it. As companies are
staying private longer, as public market investors
have a harder and harder time finding alpha, they
are more and more willing to do stuff like this. So that part of
the market is not suffering, at least, not yet. AUDIENCE: Thanks. SAM ALTMAN: Sure. JORGE CUETO: Let me do a
question from the Dory. We have a question about
universal basic income and how Google has been
supporting GiveDirectly's research on UBI in Africa. And you're a proponent
here in the US. So what are your
thoughts on how, when, and where the universal
basic income approach might be most effective? SAM ALTMAN: Yeah. I don't think universal
basic income is the solution to all problems. I think, in fact, of
the bigger problem that we were talking
about earlier of what makes people happy and fulfilled
and feel needed, and valued, and have meaning
in their lives, it is not sufficient to
solve that problem. And I don't think
it will replace the entire other social safety
net, like the people who are like eliminate
everything else, you know, no health care, no schools,
no minimum wage, basic income. I don't believe in that either. But I do think that if
we do all of our jobs, if we Silicon Valley
do all of our jobs, we will create more wealth
than the world's ever seen before and less jobs. And in that world, I think
there is a moral obligation to eliminate poverty. I think poverty is a,
obviously, very bad thing. But it is worse even
than people realize. If you look at the studies on
the long-term psychological damage that living in
poverty does to people and how it means that you never
get a chance to really invest in your own future, because
you're always just trying to survive, I think
there's just a huge amount of wasted potential. And so you know, there are a
lot of arguments about UBI. This was another thing. Like, when we started
this couple of years ago, I did not predict
at all that this was going to ignite into
this big national debate. It was like, we were just
trying to hire a researcher. You know, like, maybe
this is a good idea. Can we just do a project? And it's just been like-- so I don't think
I quite understand why it has become such a
national issue so quickly. But I do think that longer
term, if we have the ability to eliminate poverty,
we will get a lot more out of the world as a whole. JORGE CUETO: As you started
the experiment in East Bay, have you noticed
anything that maybe you didn't expect, or has it
changed your attitude towards it in any way? SAM ALTMAN: You know,
we're like seven or eight months into a five year study. So not yet. JORGE CUETO: OK. AUDIENCE: Hi, Sam. I'm thinking more in
general of founders, but this could be general, too. But what advice do
you frequently give, but you find most people never
actually follow through on? SAM ALTMAN: I mean,
no one ever listens to any advice of any sort. So, all of it. I think the thing that people-- well, the piece of
advice that people later say they wish they
had listened to is that it is very easy to get
sucked into a path in life. And you can do things
like, say, oh, I want to start a startup someday. Or, oh, I want to be an
AI researcher someday. But first, I'm going to go do
this other job to, you know, make money and gain
experience and whatever. And it's so easy to
get sucked into a path where you spend your entire
life doing something that is not really what you want to do. That's probably
the piece of advice that I have given people that
they have most often come to me, like, five
years later and said, I really wish I had
listened to that. AUDIENCE: Thank you. SAM ALTMAN: Sure. AUDIENCE: I'm curious
to hear your thoughts on the relative
rates of progress in AI between China
and everywhere else. So you mentioned
nobody has a plan, but China has a plan for
state level centralized investment in AI. Whereas, Elon Musk is
calling for regulation that would slow down-- SAM ALTMAN: Yeah. AUDIENCE: ----[INAUDIBLE]
everywhere else. SAM ALTMAN: China does
plan, that's true. It doesn't always work. They don't always have
global coordination. You know, like right now
we're in this kind of world where it seems like you
have the internet in China, and the internet in
the rest of the world. Maybe they have a plan
for their piece of it. I don't honestly know how
far along China is with AI. And I don't think anybody else
honestly really does either. I think it would be bad
to get into an arms race with China over AI. I think that's something
we should try to avoid. And I think there is
a real opportunity, although we may not have the
leaders in place to do it right now, to make this a joint
kind of worldwide project, rather than another space
race or nuclear arms race. Thanks. AUDIENCE: Hi, Sam. I was wondering if you
could expand a little bit on funding hard tech. Because I think there's a big
problem with private capital allocation. And you know, like, $70 billion
was put into VC last year, which is a drop in the bucket in
terms of worldwide investment. So do you see YC maybe
raising an $100 billion fund in the future? SAM ALTMAN: Yeah, maybe. AUDIENCE: Like, yeah,
how can we solve this? SAM ALTMAN: I think capital
is allocated really badly. And unfortunately,
there are huge efforts-- like if you have this
really valuable thing which is you get access to
invest in great startups and most of the world doesn't,
then there will obviously be a super return there. And you're going to work
really hard to protect that. And so I think expanding
access to invest in startups-- which is happening, but slowly--
is a really good thing to do. And I think, you know,
equity crowdfunding we're still in the early days
of, but is an important trend. And I think that will change
the capital allocation. I think you're seeing startups
in all these different ways go to non-traditional funders. And that's been really good. We first saw that with
consumer hardware. We're now seeing that in
a lot of other places. You know, I think the other
thing that's happening, finally, is there's just-- and there's bad to this, too. But there's just a huge
amount more capital coming in to fund early stage
private companies or mid-stage private companies. And I expect that in a world
where interest rates stay even close to as
low as they are, we are in the very early
innings of that trend. So my general model is that
the world's a very complex financial system. Capital sloshes around
looking for the best return. There are periods where there's
a really outperforming return, but then more capital
gets allocated there. And I think we're
seeing that now. AUDIENCE: But do you think
that a nuclear fusion company could raise
$100 million in an ICO or something like that? SAM ALTMAN: Yeah. Or maybe I wouldn't suggest
that they do an ICO. But I do think they
can raise $100 million. And I don't think they
could have three years ago. And I think that's a really
positive trend for the world that this stuff is now at
least somewhat possible. AUDIENCE: Awesome, thanks. SAM ALTMAN: Sure. JORGE CUETO: Another
Dory question-- what are the most common reasons
that qualified candidates get rejected from YC? SAM ALTMAN: Well, there
is one particular thing that happens a lot with
super talented people from large tech companies. So since I'm here,
I'll mention that one, which is you are a really great
person, really talented, really smart, really driven. And you don't have a good idea,
or you don't have any idea. So you make up a bad one. And there's this,
like, myth about startups that the idea
doesn't matter at all. And I think there's existential
proof that that's not true. And I think there is
this particular failure mode of people from
the big tech companies which is like, hey,
I'm really talented. I'm like, yes, you are. So I'm going to start a company. And I'll figure out
what to do later. And I think that
isn't usually what produces the great companies. And so we have learned
that it's much, much better if you're otherwise a qualified
candidate to have a good idea. And I think that would be the
common failure case for people coming out of Google. AUDIENCE: Hey, Sam. SAM ALTMAN: Hey. AUDIENCE: So what are your
thoughts about, you know, where you're going to
go or what you're going to do with your life after YC? Or does that come across? Like, are you going to take
a political office seriously? SAM ALTMAN: You
know, I don't even know what I'm going
to do in three weeks. I plan to run YC for
a really long time. I do plan to get continually
more involved with politics. But I'd like to support others,
not run for office myself, at least not any time soon. Like, I am a big believer in
do the things that you think about in the shower
in the morning when you can think
about anything you want and your kind
of mind is just off. And the things I keep
coming back to are how can I make YC
like 100 times bigger? How can I make sure that
the arrival of AI goes well? And in the short term, how can
I help our political system from going off the rails
or any more off the rails than it already has? So you know, I kind of plan to
keep working on those things for, hopefully, you
know, a really long time. AUDIENCE: Good to hear. Thanks. AUDIENCE: Hi, thank
you for being here. I have a question
about the general way Silicon Valley works. Because it seems
like it's a system in which you have the most
talented minds dealing with maybe not the
most important issues. Like, you have the
sharpest mind working on social apps or mobile apps. But we still don't
have a cure for cancer, or we still don't have
another way of having energy, or really important stuff
that the world should handle. And So my question is, do
you agree with that? What is your
perspective on that? And how do you think maybe
this can be addressed? SAM ALTMAN: I don't
agree with that. I think I used to view my
job as a capital allocator. And now, I view my job
as a talent allocator. So most of my day
is spent meeting with really smart people
and trying to convince them to work on important problems. And you know, I
think in 2007, what everyone said is the best
minds of our generation used to build spaceships,
and now they're like moving numbers
around on Wall Street. And in 2017, what people
say is the best minds of our generation used
to build spaceships. And now they get
me to click on ads. And you know, there's
always some truth to that. And there's always
someone to pick on there. But I think OpenAI has
some of the smartest minds in our world of
our generation working on having AI go well. I think Helion, which is that
fusion company I mentioned-- some of the smartest minds
of our generation working on nuclear fusion. YC, I think, last time I
counted funded eight companies working on a cure for cancer,
incredibly talented people-- or cures for cancer-- cancers. I think you can
always say there's all these people like working
on bad stuff or stuff that doesn't matter. But you know, I
think Google is still like a really great
thing for the world. AUDIENCE: This is
why we're here. SAM ALTMAN: Yeah. And I think it does matter. I think it's always easy
to pick on people and say, you're not working
on a cure for cancer. You know, you're
wasting your time. But you're making
this thing better that people use every day. And their lives would be a
lot worse if it went away. And you're making
it better every day. And I think it's really
easy to pick on people and say, you know, that person's
not spending her time right. And I think it always says
more about the person that says that than the person
they're pointing to. And if you're doing something
useful for the world, if you're doing something you
enjoy, even if you're having a small impact, but on
a product that a lot of people really use and love, I think
that's really valuable. And I think the people
who say this generally have a lot of
insecurity about how they're spending their time. AUDIENCE: So you don't
think like Silicon Valley is avoiding the tough problems? SAM ALTMAN: I invite you to
come sit in my office for a day and listen to the
people coming through and what they're working on. I really don't think that, no. AUDIENCE: OK. Cool. Thank you. AUDIENCE: Hey, Sam. Seeing that you're a largely
influential public figure, could you speak
to the privileges that might have led to that and
helped you with your success and how you may be
good or bad ally? And then also, seeing that a
lot of our consumer products are largely bias, specifically
to the people who create them, which is largely the Silicon
Valley engineers like myself and others in this
room, how do you keep your ideas and thoughts
diverse in addressing intersectional needs? SAM ALTMAN: Yeah,
great question. I basically had like nearly
all of the possible privileges. I had wonderful, loving parents. I grew up in a safe house. I'm a white guy. We had enough money that
I was able to pursue the things that I was interested
in and go to great college. And it's never
lost on me how if I had been born a mile
in a different place to a different family, different
skin color, different gender, I wouldn't be where I am now. I view that as an
obligation to try to make the world more
just going forward. I think anyone who is really
successful and doesn't-- I think anyone should
try to do the best they can with whatever
hand they're dealt. But if you're dealt, you know,
like four aces, and you win, then I think you have
an extra obligation to try to sort of make
the world a little better. So I try to be really thankful
of what everyone's done that has allowed me to do this. I also try to figure out
how to pay that forward. And I think anyone who
is really successful or almost anyone who
is really successful has like privilege, luck,
skill, and hard work. And I think people
who try to say it's just one or just the
other all tend to be wrong. So I'm thankful for that. And I try to pay that forward. In terms of biases
in the product, I think this is one of the
reasons that diverse teams are most important, the
moral question aside. The consumer
products, the teams, the companies that I think have
done the best job addressing this head on have had
a very diverse set of voices around the table. And I think that is always
the strategy I recommend, because that's the only one
I've seen consistently work. AUDIENCE: Cool, thank you. JORGE CUETO: We're on time now. But if you can do these last
three questions quickly, we can get through them. SAM ALTMAN: Sure. AUDIENCE: Thank you
for coming, Sam. My question is on
machine learning and artificial
intelligence companies. It seems to me that the
scarce or valuable thing is data in those areas
and less so the algorithm, because they're
mostly open source. So I was wondering how you think
about that when getting pitches from companies. SAM ALTMAN: I used
to believe that. I now believe that it's going
to be compute, not data. I think data is
important, but there will be a lot of it available. And just my own
experience with OpenAI, to really be at
the forefront here, you just need massive
amounts of compute. And so I used to ask
companies how they're going to get a lot of data. Now, I ask them how they're
going to get a lot of compute. AUDIENCE: OK. Thank you. SAM ALTMAN: Sure. AUDIENCE: Hey, Sam. Thanks for coming. I know you were
talking about people are becoming unhappier
and the world [INAUDIBLE] problem, all these
kind of things that are kind of quantifiable,
like physical needs of people. Have you or had companies
that come to you kind of try to solve the spiritual
needs of people? Because we can identify
the physical needs, but what about like spiritual
needs or research or companies? SAM ALTMAN: We have had a few. None of them have
really worked yet. But you know, one that
stuck out of memory was a company came
to us and said, churches, you know,
organized religion had this really
important effect that was totally separate
from the religion itself, which was this
tight-knit community. And how do you build
that in a world where most people or a
declining number of people believe in religion
and go to church? And so I think there are
people thinking about things like that, which are sort
of these non-obvious attacks on the problem that
are interesting, but none that I could
yet point to as here's this thing that's
really worked well. AUDIENCE: Hey, Sam. So you partnered with the
ACLU earlier this year, which you got
mixed reactions to. I'm wondering what you learned
from that whole experience, what successes you've
had, and what partnerships you're looking forward
to with other non-profits in the future? SAM ALTMAN: I was really
excited about how that went. We had never done
anything like that before. We often try new things. Usually, they don't work. Sometimes they do. That's something
we would do again. We would do something
more like that. I think there are these
really important organizations in the world that can use our
help to build better technology teams. And that was an
experiment that went well and that we'd love to try again. One of our software engineers,
[INAUDIBLE],, went there for-- I think she went for
like eight weeks, almost the whole program, sat
in their offices, helped them. We got a call from them
later about how well it went, being able to help
them, you know, expand and supplement
their team. And you know, I think
that's something we'd like to try again. JORGE CUETO: And one last
question, because it's gotten so many votes. SAM ALTMAN: Sure. JORGE CUETO: Elon
Musk recently called for preemptive AI regulation
at the National Governors Association. As a chair of OpenAI and
friend of Musk's, what is your opinion on this issue? And what specific actions can
we take to minimize future risk? SAM ALTMAN: The specific
thing I would support today is just insight. I think the government
should understand where the edge of capabilities
are and how it's evolving. Because I think no one,
certainly not the government, knows what the regulation for
AI should look like today. But I'd be in favor of starting
that education process. JORGE CUETO: Awesome. So, yeah, that was
our last question. SAM ALTMAN: Thank you all. JORGE CUETO: Thank you,
everyone, for coming. [APPLAUSE] SAM ALTMAN: Thanks
for having me. JORGE CUETO: [INAUDIBLE]
Hearing this guy talk kind of makes me sick. I only watched about 5 mins, I can tell he lives on another planet. He is like, don't worry about trying to be super productive, just tune into your natural rythms of work and adjust your life accordingly.
"I stay up super late, and wake up late. I then take 3 hours to wake up, and then start working from there".
I'll assume he means he goes into work at 3 p.m.
I know some people work 2nd shift, but if you wan't a "good" job, most of the work is found in a time where that is not an option.