OpenAI CEO Sam Altman on AI models getting better, faster and becoming "great enablers"

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman made a brief appearance during the opening keynote at Microsoft’s Build 2024 developer conference. His appearance, though symbolic, underscored the growing importance of AI technologies and the critical partnership between Microsoft and OpenAI

Microsoft CTO Kevin Scott engaged Altman in a short chat exploring the trajectory of AI and its impact on developers. Scott set the stage by comparing AI supercomputing systems to marine creatures. “Over the past two years, these systems have grown from orca-sized to giant whale-scale,” was Scott’s message.

Altman stressed upon the fact that each leap—such as moving from GPT-3 to GPT-4—brings significantly smarter models. “The most important thing is models will become smarter,” Altman told Scott. The underlining capability is going to get better and better, said Altman. There was buzz that OpenAI and Altman could talk about GPT-5, the model which is currently underworks.  More so because Scott’s whale reference kind of hinted at something big coming. Altman steered clear from any announcements.

He spoke about how the costs of running and developing these models has come down in the span of less than two years. More importantly, he stressed on the fact that while costs have come down the speed and efficiency has increased.

Altman said that this era of AI is as exciting as the mobile and internet revolutions. He sees it as a platform shift — a special moment for startups and product builders. Altman urged developers not to delay; this is their chance to innovate. “AI will be an enabler for almost every developer out there in creating and developing apps and making breakthroughs,” Altman said.

Altman has hinted in the past about GPT-5 coming soon but once again did not give any exact timeline of its rollout.

(The writer was in Seattle, Washington at the invitation of Microsoft)