John Werner has created a career out of bringing ideas, networks and people together to generate powerful results. John is a Managing Director and Partner at Link Ventures. John’s deep curiosity and penchant for problem-solving led him to a diverse set of roles spanning many fields and interests.
2023. Altman, the boss of OpenAI, the firm behind the massively popular ChatGPT bot, said on May 26, 2023, in Paris that his firm's technology would not destroy the job market as he sought to calm fears about the march of artificial intelligence .
Speaking at OpenAI’s Dev Day event, Sam Altman went over a lot of aspects of what’s happening right now with OpenAI’s products and other cutting-edge AI models, in answering questions from Harry Stebbings, founder of 20VC. One interesting aspect of what’s possible with new reasoning models and other systems is AI’s ability to code: throughout his interview, Altman kept talking about how much progress we can make toward no-code solutions. Referring to the “next turn of the model crank,” he suggested that there are parts of the industry that newer models will steamroll, where companies that are making tweaks around the margins are likely to lose out. “We believe that we are on a quite steep trajectory of improvement, and that the current shortcomings of the models today will just be taken care of by future generations. And I would encourage people to be aligned with that.” Altman suggested companies should be focused on creating new products and services, not trying to fix problems that may be obsolete in as little as a year or less. One of the surprising things, he said, that happened toward the beginning of this march toward better models is that companies were betting against the models themselves getting better. That trend, he said, has now been inverted as people realize how great systems are and how rapidly they improve. “I felt like 95% of people were betting against the models, and 5% of people betting for the models getting better,” he said. “I think that's now reversed. I think people have … internalized the rate of improvement, and have heard us what we intend to do. So it no longer seems to be such an issue, but it was something we used to fret about a lot.”Later in the interview, Altman went on to talk to the nature of what’s called ‘agentic’ AI. We’re hearing a lot about this now as the systems become able to perform tasks in human-like ways. Altman defined agentic AI as something that a human can give a “long-duration task” to, letting it operate with minimal supervision. He also gave a practical example – rather than just booking your reservation at a restaurant, he suggested these systems might be able to check with 200 or 300 restaurants to find the optimal diet and cuisine time for dining, etc., or alternately, become your “senior coworker” who can help reinvent business processes on the fly.Much of these predictions, he said, is speculation, because we don’t know exactly how things are going to shake out.Discussing the training of models, Altman admitted that it may be hard for some companies to get return on investment, but he pointed to situations where things like a positive cumulative effect of multiple model trainings will justify investment for enterprise. Open AI, he noted, is fairly insulated, because it has ChatGPT with legions of users, so company leaders don’t have to worry about whether they’re getting enough bang for the buck out of their training or any other process. Other companies, he said, may have to operate from a standpoint of real analysis of the industry itself. As for how to do this kind of planning, Altman provided the following, interjecting some of his own experience: “How do you balance what has to happen today, or next month, with the long-range plans, … to execute in a year or two years, with build out compute, or things that are more normal, like planning ahead enough for like office space in the city of San Francisco, … I think there was either no playbook for this, or someone had a secret playbook they didn't give me for all of this, like we've all just sort of fumbled our way through this, but there's been a lot to learn on the fly.” He also enumerated some other problems that companies have mostly been able to conquer as advances continue: bad model behaviors, failed paradigms, intractable problems. Invoking the language of the Beatles, he suggested it has been a “long and winding road” to progress. “There was definitely a time period we just didn't know going do that model,” he said of ChatGPT 4.“We have a lot of people here who are excited to build AGI,” he said. “That’s a very motivating thing. But there's a famous quote … it’s something like… the spirit of it is ‘I never pray and ask for God to be on my side. … I pray and hope to be on God's side.’ And there is something about betting on deep learning that feels like being on the side of the angels, and you kind of just- eventually, it just seems to work out.” In discussing the heavy decisions that confront leaders in these times of change, he mentioned a large number of what he called “51-49” decisions, close decisions with little clear favor, that tend to wind up on his plate. Altman mused about how to crowdsource input from a number of different people, and why that has worked well for him over the years. On the issue of semiconductor supply chains, Altman said he’s worried, but it’s not his top worry, although he characterized this hardware issue as being “in the top 10% of all top worries.”His top worry? The generalized complexity of systems.In terms of good future use cases, Altman suggested AI-enabled verticals, such as tutors, and the full human potential of applications, like an AI that “understands your whole life.”“In five years, it looks like we have an unbelievable rapid rate of improvement in technology itself,” he said. “You know, people are like, ‘man, the AGI moment came and went,’ … and we're discovering all this new stuff, both in AI research, and also about all the rest of science. … And then the second part of the prediction is that society itself actually changes surprisingly little. An example of this would be that if you asked people five years ago if computers would pass the Turing test, they would say ‘no.’ And then if you said, ‘Well, what if an Oracle ‘it would somehow be this crazy breath-taking change for society.’ And we did kind of satisfy the Turing test in a manner of speaking, of course, and society didn’t change that much. It just sort of went whooshing by. And that's kind of the example of what I expect to keep happening, which is progress, scientific progress keeps going, and it will outperform all expectations in society, in a way that I think is good and healthy.” That’s a lot of the highlights of this timely interview on models, on OpenAI’s progress, and the progress of the industry, as we wait for the full rollout of o1, and the release of Orion, probably next year, and everything else that has techheads all a-twitter. Meanwhile, we saw an o1 leak this week that brings new reasoning models more into the forefront of human thought, where, assuredly, they will stay for quite a while. The other big news right now is that a lot of these companies seem to have delayed any more rollouts until Americans visit the polls. And that’s happening. Watch this space.Our community is about connecting people through open and thoughtful conversations. We want our readers to share their views and exchange ideas and facts in a safe space.Insults, profanity, incoherent, obscene or inflammatory language or threats of any kindContinuous attempts to re-post comments that have been previously moderated/rejectedAttempts or tactics that put the site security at riskProtect your community.
LUMINARIES FINANCE AND VC DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION
United States Latest News, United States Headlines
Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.
All 8 Versions Of Sam Winchester In Supernatural ExplainedSam Winchester with demon eyes next to Sam Wesson next to Sam from Supernatural season 15.
Read more »
Sam Altman's Reddit stake now worth over $1 billion after post-earnings popOpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s stake in Reddit has ballooned to more than $1 billion in value, as of after-hours trading on Tuesday.
Read more »
How OpenAI CEO Sam Altman's lobbying power tamed WashingtonOpenAI co-founder and CEO Sam Altman has emerged as one of the most powerful people shaping AI policy.
Read more »
Josh Altman, Heather Altman Leaving Million Dollar Listing LAJosh Altman and Heather Altman are exiting ‘Million Dollar Listing Los Angeles’ after a decade on the show
Read more »
Sam Altman Says AGI Is 'Achievable With Current Hardware'Science and Technology News and Videos
Read more »
Jeff Bezos, Sam Altman, Tim Cook and other tech leaders congratulate Trump on election winLeaders including Jeff Bezos, Sam Altman and Tim Cook congratulated former president Trump and said they looked forward to working with his administration.
Read more »