Sam Altman of Ted 2025: Inside the most unlikely – and important – interview for the year of the year
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OPENAI CEO Sam Altman revealed his company has grown 800 million weekly active users and experiences ‘incredible’ growth rates, during an sometimes intense interview in TED 2025 Conference in Vancouver last week.
“I have never seen growth in any company I have participated in or not,” Altman told Ted Chris Anderson during their conversation on stage. “Chatgpt growth is really fun. I feel deeply revered. But it’s crazy to survive, and our teams are exhausted and stressed.”
The interview that closed the last day of TED 2025: Humanity resumedThey show not only the success of OpenAi, but also the increasing control that the company collides, as its technology transforms society into a pace, which alarms even some of its supporters.
“Our graphic processors are melting”: Openai struggles to scale against the background of unprecedented search
Altman draws a painting of a company that struggles to keep up with its own success, noting that Openai’s graphic processors are “melting” because of the popularity of its new features of image generation. “I call people all day and ask them to give us their graphic processors. We are so incredibly limited,” he said.
This exponential growth comes as it is reported that OPENAI is considering Starting your own social network To compete with the X’s X, according to CNBC. Altman neither confirmed nor denied these reports during the TED interview.
The company recently closed a $ 40 billion in funding roundIts estimation of $ 300 billion – the largest private technological funding in history – and this capital flow will probably help to deal with some of these infrastructure challenges.
For a non -profit target of up to $ 300 billion giant: Altman responds to “Ring of Power” accusations
During the 47-minute conversation, Anderson repeatedly pressed Altman to transform Openai from a non-profit laboratory into a $ 300 billion profit. Anderson expressed concerns shared by critics, including Elon Musk, who suggested that Altman was “corrupted by the ring of power”, mentioning “the lord of the rings.”
Altman defended Openai’s path: “Our goal is to make AGI and distribute it, to make it safe for the widespread benefit of humanity. I think we have done a lot in this direction. It is clear that our tactics have shifted over time… We didn’t think we would have to build a company about it.
When asked how he personally handles the enormous power he now owns, Altman replied: “Shockingly, the same as before. I think you can get used to something step by step … You’re the same person. I’m sure I’m not in any way, but I don’t feel different.”
“Separation of Revenue”: Openai plans to pay artists whose styles are used by AI
One of the most reputable reports of the interview policy was Altman’s recognition that Openai is working on a system for offsetting artists whose styles are imitating AI.
“I think, IP theft in AI generated imagesS “If you say,” I want to generate art in the style of these seven people, all of whom have agreed with this: “How do you split how much money goes to each of them?”
Currently, Openai image generator refuses to mimic the style of living artists without consent, but will generate art style, genres or studios. Altman suggested that it could be a revenue sharing model, although the details remain scarce.
Autonomous AI agents: “Most Postpaid Safety Challenge” Openai collided
The conversation became especially intense when discussing. “Agent AI” – Autonomous systems that can take action on the Internet on behalf of the user. The new” Openai “Operator“The tool allows AI to perform tasks such as reservation of restaurants, provoking concerns about safety and accountability.
Anderson challenged Altman: “One person can release this agent there and the agent can decide:” Well, to fulfill this function, I have to copy everywhere. ” Are there red lines that you have clearly painted internally, where you know what the moments of danger are? “
Altman referred to Openai “Readiness frame“But it provided several specifics of how the company would prevent the abuse of autonomous agents.
“AI that you provide access to your systems, your information, the ability to click on your computer … When they make a mistake, it’s much higher bets,” Altman admitted. “You will not use our agents if you do not trust that they will not empty your bank account or delete your data.”
’14 Definitions of 10 Researchers “: Inside Openai’s struggle to determine AGI
At an revealing moment, Altman acknowledged that even Openai had no consensus on what the artificial general intelligence (AGI) is, the company’s stated purpose.
“This is like a joke, if you have 10 Openai researchers in a room and want to define AGI, you will receive 14 definitions,” Altman said.
He suggested that instead of focusing on a specific moment when AGI arrives, we have to admit that “the models will just become smarter and more capable and more intelligent and more capable of this long exponential … We will have to fight and get great benefits from this incredible system.”
Loosening Railings: The new Openai approach to content moderation
Altman also revealed a significant change in content policy, revealing that Openai has loosen the limitations of its image generation models.
“We have given consumers a lot more freedom to what we traditionally would think as speech harm,” he explained. “I think part of the alignment of the model is to keep track of what the user of a model wants to do within the very wide limits of what society decides.”
This change can signal a broader move to providing more users control over AI outputs, which is potentially aligned with Altman’s pronounced preference to leave hundreds of millions of users – not “small elite meetings” – to determine the appropriate fuses.
“One of the cool new things about AI is our AI can talk to everyone on earth and we can learn the collective value preference of what everyone wants, not have a bunch of people who are blessed by society to sit in the same room and make these decisions,” Altman said.
“My child will never be smarter than AI”: Altman’s vision for the future of AI
The interview ended with Altman, thinking about the world that his newborn son will inherit – one in which AI will exceed the human intelligence officer.
“My child will never be smarter than AI. They will never grow in a world where products and services are not incredibly smart, incredibly capable,” he said. “This will be the world of incredibly material abundance … where the speed of change is incredibly fast and incredible new things happen.”
Anderson closed with a sobering observation: “In the next few years, you will have some of the biggest possibilities, the largest moral challenges, the largest decisions you need to make from perhaps every person in history.”
The Law on Balancing a Billion-Address: How Openai navigates the power, profit and target
The appearance of Altman’s TED comes at a critical moment for Openai and the wider AI industry. The company faces the installation of legal challenges including Copyright lawsuits By authors and publishers, while pressing the boundaries of what AI can do.
Recent achievements like Chatgpt’s Viral image generation feature And the SORA video generation tool demonstrates opportunities that seemed impossible only months ago. At the same time these instruments have ignited Copyright debateAuthenticity and the future of creative work.
Altman’s willingness to engage in difficult questions about the safety, ethics and public impact of AI shows the awareness of the bets. However, critics may note that specific responses to specific precautions and policies remain elusive throughout the conversation.
The interview also revealed the competitive tension at the heart of the OpenAi mission: to move quickly for the progress of AI technology while guaranteeing safety; Balancing the motives for public benefit; respect for creative rights while democratizing creative instruments; and navigation between elite experience and public preferences.
As Anderson noted in his last comment, the decisions that Altman and his peers make in the coming years may have an unprecedented impact on the future of humanity. Whether Openai can handle my stated mission to ensure that “all humanity is taking advantage of artificial general intelligence,” is yet to be seen.
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