Daily Productive Sharing 1210 - An Interview with Sam Altman

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Ben Thompson interviewed OpenAI's Sam Altman, who reflected on the early days of the company and emphasized the importance of its mission: to build beneficial artificial general intelligence (AGI). Altman believes OpenAI’s success lies not only in its technological innovation but also in its ability to turn research into real products and a viable business. While OpenAI began without a clear commercial model, it has since evolved into a major consumer tech company. He remains confident in OpenAI’s future and stressed the importance of adaptation and continuous improvement:

1. They were one of the earliest companies funded by Y Combinator. At the time, he felt both immensely grateful and that it was just incredibly cool. It was a fantastic community, and to this day, he believes YC’s influence on the tech world is still underrated—even though many already consider it hugely impactful.
2. YC was a powerful tool back then. They used it to push more people toward hard tech startups and to support more research—things he’s always been deeply interested in.
3. He worked in an AI lab during undergrad. While they barely made any progress, he always thought AI was incredibly cool.
4. One forgotten fact about OpenAI’s origin is that it started purely as a research lab—with no clear goal, not even a vague direction.
5. One of the most valuable strategies in his life has been “feeling your way through the dark until you find the light.” They spent a long time in the dark before eventually discovering the right path.
6. The price of being on the cutting edge of innovation is that you’ll make a lot of dumb mistakes—because you’re operating in the fog of war.
7. One of the craziest things he’s seen in Silicon Valley is how, within just six months, OpenAI went from “barely a company” to becoming a real, significant one.
8. He envisions OpenAI becoming something like Google. It’s not a platform in the traditional sense, but people use Google accounts to log in and carry their data between sites. That experience is part of Google—and OpenAI could become a platform in the same way.
9. He thinks the DeepSeek team is great, and their model is solid, but its viral success wasn’t really about model performance alone.
10. One of his favorite books is The Beginning of Infinity by David Deutsch. There's a brilliant passage early in the book about how creativity often comes from slight modifications and extensions of what already exists.

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Ben Thompson 采访了 OpenAI 的 Sam Altaman，他回顾了 OpenAI 成立初期的经历，强调了该公司使命的重要性，即构建有益的通用人工智能 (AGI)。Altman 认为，OpenAI 的成功不仅在于其技术创新，还在于它的产品化和商业化策略。他提到，尽管一开始没有明确的商业模型，OpenAI 逐渐发展成为一个重要的消费者科技公司。Altman 对 OpenAI 的未来充满信心，并强调了适应和不断改进的重要性：

1. 他们是 Y Combinator 最早一批投资的公司之一，那时他既无比感激，也觉得这是一件特别酷的事。这是一个非常棒的社区，他至今仍认为 YC 对科技行业的影响被低估了，尽管很多人已经觉得它影响很大。
2. YC 在当时是一种非常强大的工具，我们可以用它来推动更多人做硬科技创业，也可以用它来支持更多研究的开展——而这些一直是他非常感兴趣的事。
3. 他在本科时就参与了 AI 实验室的工作，虽然那时几乎什么都没做出来，但他始终觉得 AI 是件非常酷的事情。
4. 有一件事似乎被遗忘在历史尘埃中了，那就是：他们创办 OpenAI 时，它只是一个研究实验室，完全没有清晰的目标，甚至连模糊的方向都没有。
5. 他一生中最受用的一种方式就是：在黑暗中摸索前进，直到你找到光亮。他们在黑暗中摸索了很久，最后才找到了正确的方向。
6. 站在创新的最前沿要付出的代价就是——你会犯很多愚蠢的错误，因为你处在“战争迷雾”之中。
7. 在硅谷，他见过最疯狂的事之一就是：在短短六个月内，OpenAI 从“几乎不算是一家公司”变成了一家真正的大公司。
8. 他认为，OpenAI 未来的角色就像 Google——它本质上不是一个平台，但人们会用 Google 账户登录，会在网页间带着自己的 Google 数据。这就是 Google 体验的一部分，而我们也会成为那样的平台。
9. 他觉得 DeepSeek 的团队很棒，模型也不错，但真正让它爆火的，并不是模型能力本身。
10. 他最喜欢的书之一是 David Deutsch 的《无限的开始》。书的前几页有一段特别精彩，讲的是创造力其实就是对已有事物的稍作修改与延伸。

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