Summary:
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has recently made a pair of podcast appearances that have raised questions from some critics.
On the BG2 Podcast, Altman reacted dismissively to a straightforward inquiry about how OpenAI plans to fund its massive capital expenditures.
Then, during a separate interview with Tyler Cowen, Altman was asked how Altman leverages AI in his operations,While many would anticipate Altman to use the question as yet another opportunity to plug AI, Altman instead reminded the audience about many of the technology’s limitations.
During a recent episode of The AI Investor Podcast, two or our 24/7 Wall St. Analysts Eric Bleeker and Austin Smith discussed each of the two interviews and what about them bothered them the most.
As to dodging the question on the BG2 podcast regarding spending commitments, Eric said, “That is the one question you need a solid answer on.”
Transcript:
Eric Bleeker: Sam Altman had appeared on the BG2 Podcast, which is from a couple of venture capitalists, and Brad Gerstner had asked him a very, like the kind of question that if you’re in PR 101, you’re expecting, which is how are you gonna pay for all this CapEx?
Altman, his reaction was almost like, “I’m above having to answer this question.” And it’s like, no, that is the one question you need a solid answer on.
Austin: And I’ll say he’s talking to a friendly investor. I believe Brad is an investor in OpenAI and Sam sort of had this quip of, “You know, well, I’ll find someone to buy your shares” instead of answering the question was sort of like, how could you be, how could you be bearish on us? Yeah, that, that rubbed me the wrong way too.
I’ll give you another deep cut. Interesting one. One of my favorite, podcasters is Tyler Cowen, and he does Conversations With Tyler. I dunno if I shared this episode with you, but he also interviewed Sam Waltman. I think the episode dropped within a week of the BG2 one. One of the things I was, it was just ironic, and I’m not saying that this is bearish for the AI sector. He kept asking Sam these questions about, you know, “How do you leverage yourself? How are you achieving this growth?” And you expect Sam to say, “Oh, I’m using GPT every day.” And he kept saying, “Well, we hire really great people.” And Tyler Cowen even asked like, “When you’re going in to learn about these new markets where you’re doing deals, you know, in Saudi Arabia or, or Arizona or wherever, you know, how do you develop the local expertise?”
So he said, “Oh, well, we hire a lot of local experts.” And Tyler said, “Well, why not use AI for that?” And Sam sort of said, “Well, you know, there there’s some like subtlety and nuance that we can only get from experts, which I thought was very interesting out of the guy who is in many ways has to sell the most bullish version of what AI is.
Sort of admitting that there’s still some really important use cases where it’s not there yet. That’s not bearish for the technology. I think it’s just an interesting commentary on where it is today. And he even said in that conversation with Tyler, like, they had a hypothetical how long until we have an AI CEO. And you sort of could hear, “Well, like maybe that’s not really realistic for a couple reasons.”
So I just thought that that dichotomy was interesting. You have to be out there selling the edge, edge, edge potential of AI while also maybe admitting internally that in your own operations you’re not ready to– it’s not quite ready for primetime to fully replace those skills.
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