I think I used to be like a very anxious, unhappy person.If you had told me that one weekend long retreat in Mexico was going to significantly change that, I would have said, absolutely not.
You're listening to Life in 7 Songs.From the San Francisco Standard, I'm your host, Sophie Berman.
Our guest this week is Sam Altman, the 39-year-old CEO of OpenAI, the groundbreaking company behind ChatGPT and a leader in the development of AGI, Artificial General Intelligence.
AGI aims to create machines that can think, learn, and understand the world like humans, or even better than we can.It's a concept with the potential to transform every aspect of life, for better or worse.
But in this episode, a rare glimpse into the man behind the machines.Sam Altman, thanks so much for coming on the show.
Thanks for having me.This seems like a fun one.
So I hear that we're in your office right now, but there's nothing personal in here.
Yeah, it's well, it's the podcast room, but I sort of I like very quiet spaces I don't do like noise is very distracting to me and This is like the quietest room in the office.So I sort of ended up gradually.
Yeah, I have an office at home That is like, you know many years of collections of personal objects though.It's this room I spent all this time in and pretty much no one has ever been in what's the most like fun object you have in there?
I have a bunch of like objects from like the history of technology and sort of they go around the room.
And at one end, the side of the room that I sit on, there's a hand axe, which is sort of one of the earliest pieces of human or hominid technology and kind of was maybe the only one for like more than a million years.And I stare at that thing a lot.
And I just think about like how far we have come from the single piece of technology we use everything for that we started digging stuff out of the ground and melting things we found and combining them together.And now we have all of this.
And Sam, you mentioned noise can be distracting, but I figure you make some exceptions for music because you chose a song for present times.And in an email, you said you probably play this song more than any other as an adult.So what'd you choose?
I chose the Rachmaninoff Second Piano Concerto. I think it's an incredibly beautiful piece of music, no matter what.But for whatever reason, this became something that I started listening to when I worked.
And so I would start playing it when I would sit down at the beginning of the day, or if I had to really focus on something. And it just became this very comforting piece of music to me over a long period of time.
I mean, I was on a flight recently, probably like 11-12 hours of flying, and I just played it the whole time, like on repeat.So sometimes that happens.
I love there's like the sense of excitement right away and there's like sort of like drama and it's a beautiful melody like very quickly.This is a great part too when the strings come in.
I don't know, it's like a great level of excitement but it's not distracting.You can like listen to it very loudly, you can listen to it quietly.
It's for me a very contemplative and calming piece as well.And I wonder, does it ever offset some of the heady questions that I know must be... Yeah, it's somehow like grounding music.Yeah.
I mean, you have people lobbying things like, you know, the world could be ending, you know, due to what you're making or, you know, do you ever just put
It's amazing how many things can go wrong in one day by the end of the day.And then you kind of are just like, oh, wow, that was quite a bruiser of a day.
And then you kind of fall into bed, and you wake up, and you do it again the next day, but somehow starting with a grounding piece of music.That's sort of a nice thing.
I imagine one of those bruisers of a day was about a year ago when you were fired from your job.
Ten months or something like that, yeah.On a Friday afternoon, I got like, to me at least, shock fired by the board of OpenAI.I was randomly thinking about it this weekend.Actually, this is a funny little tie-in.
The only time people have ever, like the only time they've ever been guests in my office
I lived at my home, the only one, was during that whole weekend, a lot of the company, as we were trying to figure out what to do about this whole thing, was over at my house.
And the lawyers sort of took over my office because they needed a place they could like close off and everybody else was just, you know, in the hallways, in the dining room, in the kitchen, in the outside, in the garden, whatever.
But the reason I was thinking about it is I was like going through just some like stuff cleaning out my office for the first time and I like found a bunch of stuff they had printed out that weekend and then like kind of like left there because we all then you know kind of came back here to this office when stuff was done.
I mean the whole thing was like a just wild crazy like what the fuck confusing moment and then it was over and we had to pick up the pieces.
A year later or close to a year later, how would you say that whole episode has changed you?
There are all these like issues about like, oh, I learned this lesson or I learned that lesson or I will like never make this particular corporate governance mistake again.But I think that's not what you're asking.
So it was this like crazy traumatic thing to go through.And it was like quite public, like it was just like in the news loudly and a lot of it and just sort of.
It felt, it was very painful and sort of shameful and then it felt very unfair because I, you know, I'm not the one that like made this mess and now I got to deal with it or whatever.
And I didn't get time, I didn't get, because it was like a lot of pieces to pick up, I didn't get time to like deal with it or like recover.And the first few months were just like this crazy fugue that took a lot out of me.
A couple of positive things that I think really did change me is one, like I learned a lot about gratitude.It's just like overwhelming gratitude for the people around me and what I get to do.
And then I really learned that like I, and I think in a good way that I like
I really value a sense of duty and that you don't turn your back on things no matter how hard they are, if it's what you signed up for and what you feel committed to and what you think is important.
And that was a real like growing up moment for me and something that I'm like proud of and happy about.
Yeah.So let's go back a little bit just quickly.So you grew up in suburban St.Louis, eldest of four siblings.It's been chronicled a lot that you were pretty precocious as a kid, famously fixing the family VCR at like age three.
I don't know if that's true.I don't remember three, but parents say that.
Coding by age eight?Yes, no?That's true.Okay.Maybe just tell me something random then that maybe isn't known.
Well, I was just in St.Louis a few days ago, and we lived near this park called Forest Park, big park.And there's this bike, like a 10 kilometer bike trail around it, and I would ride around that with my dad.
But the thing that I had forgotten was, there's a little like pond in the park, and there's a thing there called the boathouse where you could like rent these little boats.
And I worked there when I was like 15 or something, and I had totally forgotten about this. But it was just such a happy time to be on the dock, cleaning off boats and getting people in and out of them.I really loved it.
It's nice to work outside sometimes.
Just because you mentioned your dad and because later you chose a song about him, just a few words on him growing up?
like totally wonderful guy.
One of the many things I really loved about my dad is that he was he was great at taking an interest in whatever we took an interest in and as a kid I was just like oh isn't that cool that we like had all the same interests and you know it's clear to me now he's just like oh if my kid likes scuba diving like then he did decide I think he did end up really really loving it but he got into it so that we could like have something to do together and many other examples like that which is very cool.
So you chose your next song for your high school years.Tell me what you picked.
What's My Age Again by Blink-182.You know, this is like not a good song by any definition of the word good song.
Nor is Blink-182 a good band, but I love Blink-182.And one of the things that was interesting about choosing the songs for this is like, with a couple of exceptions, none of these are what I would say are my favorite songs.
But they were the songs that came loaded with the most emotional attachment.And this one really brought back a flood of memories of being in high school and being with my friends and doing whatever you do and running around the city.
♪ I took her out, it was a Friday night ♪ ♪ I walk alone to get the feeling right ♪ ♪ We started making out and she took off my pants ♪ ♪ But then I turned on the TV ♪
It just makes me want to really shake my head up and down.
Is that kind of what you want to do?
Not somewhat, but like not – less than you, I guess.
That's so good.Okay.I got a kick out of you choosing this song, though, and I'm reading into it, so it's a stretch.Go ahead.But, you know, the title again is What's My Age Again?
And Paul Graham, co-founder of Y Combinator, wrote this really famous essay in 2007 titled Why to Not Not Start a Startup. And the first reason he lists is that a founder is, quote, too young.And he basically uses you as the counterexample.
He says, this guy, Sam Altman, is 19, but on the inside, he's like a 40-year-old.So I guess I was just curious, like, did that ring true then and now?Like, do you feel your age?
Actually, if anything, I feel like younger and less mature.
I would say so.At 19, I probably felt older than other 19-year-olds.
And now it's like feeling youthful.I mean, 40 is youthful.
I mean, in some sense, I do have like a lot of responsibility, but I'm not like a serious person.
Okay, so Sam, we're jumping ahead again.You went to Stanford for two years, then you dropped out to launch a company.Yeah.But you did choose a song from your two years at college.
I did.I picked That Was a Crazy Game of Poker by O.A.R.
I liked this song in kind of late high school too, but it's like a great road trip song.And we did like a lot of road trips.I had this Volvo 850, like the station wagon.
I mean it like my memories it was just this like chunk of steel and it was like really slow like really kind of like broke a lot but I really loved it a lot and we would like friends and I would do these like road trips around California and California's like pretty awesome you know you can go to like
Yosemite one weekend.Yeah, exactly.And for whatever reason, this song became one of like the very much repeat songs.
And I've talked to other people since when I've like the song has come up or whatever, where people are like, that's my favorite road trip song of all time.
So I think there's something about it, which is fun and everybody sings along and it's, you know, it's just like a, there's like something about this and driving with the windows down that clicked.
And that was just like, that was sort of like something we did on a lot of the weekends.
And also in the category of what I would say is not a great piece of music.
But for whatever reason at the time it just really like was something we all love.
But I thought you might have chosen it because you also played poker in college.
I did.I mean, I still play poker.I never listen to the song, though.
I mean, it's not like you have to do one to do the other, right?
No, I think no connection.OK.So after college, you pitched your company, Looped, which was a location tracking tool, to Y Combinator, the startup accelerator.They invested in you.You were 19.
You worked on Loop for around seven years, eventually selling it for $43 million. Took some time off, there's a gap, and a bit later, we're really kind of condensing time, but you became the president of Y Combinator 2014 to 2019.
And you chose a song from that period, I believe.
So one of the things I feel very fortunate to have gotten to do and would love for more people to be able to do is I took a long time off between that startup and then doing Y Combinator.
And that was like, I look back at that as one of the most fun times of my whole life so far.
Traveled a ton, learned a bunch of stuff, picked up a bunch of hobbies.
There's unfortunately no time for any hobbies whatsoever right now.I like spend time with people I love and I work and that's it.But hobbies that I aspire to get back to someday.
But it was like a really lovely time and I started going on camping trips then with this group of college friends.We went on like an annual camping trip for a while.Now we've all gotten like too busy and stopped.
But that got to this next song that I chose.
You chose Opus by Eric Pridz.
Like, as music selection goes for laying out under the stars in a sleeping bag and listening to a song and talking to very close friends, I think it is hard to pick one that is a lot better than this.
that like really builds over the course of the song.And it's like an intense journey to go on.
Yeah.I mean, like to me it feels like the universe is building or something.
One of my friends said it felt like you're going through your whole life each time it plays.
But I think like the universe building and then, you know.
Collapsing back and then starting again.
What are you guys talking about, like dreaming about when something like this is playing?
You know, one of those years, it was all about AGI.I think the song came out probably, did you say 2016?Okay, so that was like one opening I really got going.And I was like, man, this whole AGI thing is gonna be super wild someday.
And it's sort of a good song for that too.
It's time for a quick break.When we come back, Sam talks psychedelics.Stay with us.
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Like you'd never been and you just had an impression.
Never been and I like had the like identity of I don't do that thing.That is like a ridiculous escapism, crazy party, like whatever it is.I don't like want to be associated with that.
And then the first time I went, I was like, oh, this is like, everyone's so happy.
This is like one possible part of what the post-AGI world can look like, where people are just focused on doing stuff for each other, caring for each other, making incredible gifts to give each other, just incredible art that people make.
You mean like when we don't have to work anymore because the robots are- Or we work in a new kind of way.Okay.
The people that make the Burning Man art projects do incredible amounts of work.And they do it for people that they don't necessarily know.They just want to do something, like give an amazing gift to.And I was like, oh, the art's amazing.
The music's amazing.I remember the first time I ever got there, I was sharing a friend's RV.And I got in there, and I went to sleep.And everybody else had already gone out for the night.But I was itching to go see all this.
And so I put on my hiking boots and my headlamp and my little backpack and stuff. And I walked out to the playa for the first time, and I was just like, what?It was unbelievable.
I was like, this is the most beautiful man-made thing I have ever seen by far.You know, everything lit up, all these lights, all this incredible art, people just biking around, everyone like so happy, so engaged, so present.
that I was like, okay, I was wrong to be so negative on Burning Man.There's something about this.And then it just became a thing that I enjoyed doing.
Again, I was never like, oh, my whole life's about Burning Man, but I like really looked forward to going and loved it and thought it was, I still think it is.Didn't get to go this year and was sad, or last year, but just an amazing thing.
Is it hard more recently to be you and still have that experience?
Yes, but you gotta just like live your life.
I only ask because I saw the last couple of years you've given talks at Burning Man, but maybe it's harder to just be at Burning Man.
Totally.Yeah.So you chose the song Underwater by Rufus Dussault.
Yeah.I think Rufus is just unbelievable Burning Man music for whatever reason.And that is the song that brings the Burning Man memories.
You were always around to make me
One thing I love about them is I think they really have their own sound.It's unmistakable music to me.And it's just great, happy, relaxed vibes.It's not too intense.
But I'm going to push you a little bit.Maybe you, again, don't listen to the lyrics.And actually, you chose a lot of songs with no lyrics.So I believe you if you say that you don't.
But this song is really about feeling stuck and drowned and then asking for help and getting a perspective shift, which is burning me.
I think like many other people, I have often really liked a song for a long period of time, never consciously paid attention to the lyrics.And then way after the fact in life, like realized, oh, that's what they're about.
And they do somehow deeply resonate with me.So I assume there's like something going on there.
Have you had any psychedelic experiences at Burning Man?
were those transformative for you and like how you think about your work?
I think psychedelic experiences can be totally incredible and the ones that have been life-changing for me have been ones where you like go travel to a guide and it's like a very it's like very much psychedelic medicine.
The like Burning Man version has been I would say less transformative but and not something I've done a lot of like I'm a I'm like a rare like Burning Man is like enough on its own I don't need the enhancement but obviously a super fun thing.
The ones that are guided how does that play into your work?
This was all like a long time ago, but I would say it was one of the most transformative things in my life.I think I used to be like a very anxious, unhappy person.
And if you had told me that like a one weekend long retreat in Mexico was going to significantly change that, I would have said absolutely not.And it really did.
I mean, a lot of ways.I think a big one, though, is I feel like a very calm person now.And that has been super helpful to me just from a quality of life perspective, but also ability to, I think, work on hard and, you know, important to me stuff.
So I'm very grateful for that.
So, Sam, right before you left Y Combinator in 2018, your father died pretty suddenly.What, I guess, impact has losing him had on you?
That's a big question.I mean, I think it totally scrambled me and my siblings and my family for longer than we realized.And I'm sure it still does now in all sorts of ways.
I mean, at some point you just like, there's nothing to do but move forward in whatever broken state you can. But the first couple of years in particular, it's like really, it obviously really messes you up in ways you don't realize.
And it was not expected.And it was a heart attack and he was like a super healthy, I mean, he was like a very athletic, very in shape guy.And it happened while he was exercising, but it was like totally unexpected.
I'm sorry for your loss.And you did choose a song that makes you think of your dad?
Yeah, so it's interesting.This is like a, I don't know why, because this song, recomposed by Max Richter, the spring one, is not anything I think he ever would have listened to, or even probably liked.
I said there's some stuff on this list that would be really good music, even though most of it wasn't.This is really great music, but it's not the kind of stuff my dad ever listened to.
You know, the other song that makes me think of my dad is like a Rolling Stone, which was, I think he would have said that was his favorite song and we listened to it all the time.But this song, I did hear it like pretty quickly after he died.
And it was just like a very comforting piece of music.And sometimes I hear a piece of music that I love so much.I like listen to again and again and again, and just like, until I get tired of it.
And then whenever that happens, like that piece of music, it's associated with that person or that place or that time period.
At the start it's sort of almost got the sense of like an orchestra warming up and then like the sort of melody sort of emerges out of it.
And there's this like sense of like opening or beginning or whatever I don't know it's almost like like a sort of regrowth kind of thing.
It's a super optimistic like soaring piece.
Are there shared characteristics in the music?
I think my dad was this super optimistic, hopeful, always saw the best in people, always saw the good, and somehow that comes through in the music to me.
I'm sure there are many things you want to tell him, probably every day, if I know anything about grief.But I wonder, is there anything in particular in the last couple of years that you wish he could have been around to see?
I mean, yeah, so much.I kind of thought this would stop by now.
It's been, you know, it's been a little bit more than six years, but I still, once in a while, like, there's something that I'm like, oh, dad would think this was so funny or, you know, like, and I like pull up my phone to still call him and I'm like, yeah.
Some of those things just never go away.
Maybe that one never goes away at this point, yeah.
Yeah.So your last song, Your Hand in Mine by Explosions in the Sky, this is kind of a song about love.
To me it is.I think most of the world knows this song from the Friday Night Lights theme song.
Which kind of bothers me because to me it's like this like very special thing or whatever.And Explosion in the Sky is like a special band and it now became this thing that everyone likes. you know, associates with it.What is a great TV show for sure.
But when Ollie and I first met, we both really loved this song.
And I remember one night where we were just like, you know, sitting next to each other, looking at a fire, listening to this song, kind of looked over at each other at some point and like, didn't speak about it then either, but felt like it had this like great story of us in it.
And for you, is it the feeling of falling in love or being in love with Oliver?
When did you guys meet and how did you guys meet?
We met at a party in 2015.
Could you say anymore?Like, see each other across the room?I don't know.
Yeah, pretty much.Stayed up super late talking.Okay.It's not like a detailed story.I mean, it's a great story, but there's not like a crazy dramatic thing to it.
But you saw him, he saw you, and you just started dating.
Not right away.No, no, no.We were actually both dating.OK, I guess there's a good part of the story.We were both dating other people at the time.But these things work themselves out.
There was an interest.Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
It was both at the end of a failing relationship.
Now you're married.Congratulations.Thank you.What do you guys hope for, I guess, in your future together?Are you hoping to grow your family?
We are, yeah.I am more excited for that than I think I've ever been for anything.
What does that look like?How many kids, I guess we're talking, do you think you want?
Let's start with a few and see how it goes, but maybe a lot.
But I think big families are great.Six or eight maybe would be awesome.I don't know.But let's try.Because you are one of four.I had this huge family of people, and I think it's a nice thing.
Are there any family traditions that you grew up with that you'd want to continue, specifically as a dad, as you picture yourself as a dad?
So I think traditions are really important.I'm mega long traditions.And I think as a kid, I didn't quite realize how much they meant to me.Like the big stuff like holidays, but also just like the little rituals of like day-to-day life in a family.
My mom was like really big that we all sat down for dinner together every night.And I loved that.Even as a kid, I knew that it was like a special thing.And now I'm like, it's shocking to me that
I understand why, and everyone's busy, and everyone, the kids are busy, the parents are busy, but it's shocking to me that that's not a more common experience now.
Right.Okay, so my last question has to do with something I've heard.I guess a book is being written about you.Yeah.Like a biography?
I actually like the woman writing it a lot.
And you're cooperating with it?
Not really.I don't think I'd ever be like, oh, it's great someone's doing this, but yeah, it feels like we're in the second inning of this whole thing or something.
Give it another 40 years, what might that biography say?What do you hope it would say?
I don't think that way.I hope that AGI is a really wonderful thing for the world.I hope I have been and continuing to be a great dad.I hope I'm retired on our ranch watching the plants grow.I don't know.Something like that.
Well, thank you so much for coming on.This was a lot of fun.Thank you for having me.This was fun. Life in Seven Songs is a production from the San Francisco Standards.
This episode was produced by me, Sophie Behrman, and our senior producer, Jasmine Morris.Our executive producers are Griffin Gaffney and John Steinberg.This episode was mixed by Michelle Lanz.
Our theme music is by Kate Davis and Zubin Hensler, and Clark Miller created our show art.Our music consultant is Sarah Timbeksian, and Jesse Regala was our on-site videographer and engineer.
You can find Sam Altman's full playlist at sf.news.spotify.
Also, just a heads up, if you enjoyed this episode, you'll want to tune in next time when billionaire investor and shark Mark Cuban shares his life's theme and a song that actually brings him to tears.
Subscribe wherever you listen so you don't miss it.
