I really enjoyed this conversation between Lex Fridman and Sam Altman. Sam is the CEO of OpenAI, who developed the GPT large language model, and the ChatGPT interface.
I thought that his responses were thoughtful and considered. The conversation veers toward the technical, but there’s enough at a high level for this to be useful for anyone with more than a passing interest in the technology.
I also got the sense that Sam is clearly aware of the challenges presented by the technology his company is building. And it also felt like the company is trying their best to navigate a difficult environment, for which there are few guidelines and no universal value systems that apply.
The challenge of building any sociotechnical system, with such a broad scope and potential impact in the world, is a hard problem. OpenAI is going to make lots of mistakes, but it seems like they’re making a good faith attempt to do the right thing.