Barry Weiss
speaker
976 appearances
13 recordings
2 series
first heard Dec 2024
last heard Mar 2025
Barry Weiss’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
But he argues that changing its structure in this way might even be illegal. Now, on the one hand, this is a very complex disagreement. To understand every single detail of it, you probably need a law degree and special expertise in American tax law, neither of which I happen to have.
But you don't need any special degree or specialization to understand that at its heart, this feud is about something much bigger and more existential than the business model of open AI, although that's extremely important.
At its heart, what this is really about is a fight over who will ultimately be in control of a technology that some say, if used incorrectly, could very well make human beings obsolete. So the stakes are low. Here to tell his side of the story is Sam Altman.
We talk about where AI is headed, why he thinks superintelligence, in other words, the moment where AI surpasses human capabilities, is closer than ever. We talk about the perils of AI bias and censorship, why he donated a million dollars to Trump's inaugural fund as a person who had long opposed Trump, What happens if America loses the AI race to a foreign power like China?
And of course, what went wrong and is going wrong between him and the richest man on Earth? We'll be right back. Today's episode is brought to you by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression or FIRE. FIRE believes that free speech is the foundation of a free society. This freedom is fundamental.
It drives scientific progress, entrepreneurial growth, artistic expression, civic participation, and so much more. But free speech rights don't protect themselves. And that's where FIRE comes in. Proudly nonpartisan, they defend free speech and the First Amendment where it's needed most, on campus, in the courtroom, and throughout our culture.
If you believe in that fight, and if you believe in the principles of free speech, consider joining FIRE with a gift before the end of the year. Your donation will help FIRE continue their critical work and its tax deductible. Visit thefire.org slash donate today to make your gift and join the free speech movement. Bernard-Henri Lévy's new book, Israel Alone, will make the perfect holiday gift.
You may have read BHL in our pages ahead of the French elections this past summer, or perhaps you remember our reporting in the free press about how an ad for his new book, Israel Alone, was rejected from a trade publication on the grounds that it would cause controversy. You heard that right. An ad for a book about Israel would itself cause controversy.
Or perhaps you're familiar with one of the 48 books that Levy has written. Regardless, I urge you to pick up a copy of his new book, Israel Alone. It's a passionate creed decor about Israel and the tragedy of October 7th, starting with Levy's eyewitness account. He was on the ground in Israel the day after the pogrom.
From his unique humanist perspective, Levy analyzes what exactly Hamas did to Israel on October 7th and delves into how Iran, Russia, radical Islamist groups, Turkey, and China have played roles in and profited from this tragedy.
He weaves in his experiences from his first trip to Israel in 1967 and his meetings with Israeli leaders throughout the decades, including Menachem Begin, Shimon Peres, Ariel Sharon, Yitzhak Shamir, and Yitzhak Rabin. The book addresses the worldwide eruption of anti-Semitism. over the past year and takes head-on the arguments for a ceasefire.
It's a deep meditation on Zionism and Israel, and I think regular listeners of this show will get a lot out of it. Israel Alone is available on Amazon and at local booksellers. If your local independent bookstore does not carry Israel Alone, ask them to order it. This ad is sponsored by Marty Peretz in honor of Bernard-Henri Lévy. Sam Altman, welcome to Honestly.
The last time we spoke, and I know you've given a zillion interviews since then, but it was in April of 2023, and it feels like a world away. ChatGPT had just launched, and people were just at the very beginning of trying to figure out, like in the abstract, what this technology was and how it might transform their everyday lives. And
Now, sitting here in December of 2024, ChatGPT is a household name. So is OpenAI, and of course, some of your competitors are too, like Perplexity and Gemini and Claude. And average Americans are using these tools every day, everything from math tutoring to debugging code to drafting emails, and it's very, very good at doing that.
Tell me about how ChatGPT and, I guess, AI technology more broadly has changed since we last spoke a year and a half ago and whether or not it's where you expected it to be today or further along.
Give me a sense of, like, how are you using the tool that you have helped create in your daily life? Like, the way that most people I know are using it, Tyler Cowen and lots of people who are, like, passionate early adopters, it almost seems to have, like, replaced Google for them. And it's just, like, a much, much deeper Google. Is that how it's working for you?
Wow.
What do you call it? Do you call it searching or is there a verb in the way that Googling is a verb?
in September, so just a few months ago, you published this manifesto on your website predicting the emergence of superintelligence in the next few years, or as you put it, and memorably, in the next few thousand days. Explain to us what superintelligence is. Tell us how we'll know if it's actually here and how it stands to change people's lives over the next decades.
Okay, well, Sam, one of the reasons we wanted to have this conversation with you today is not just because we want to hear about the ways that AI is going to transform the way that we live and work, but because you're in a very public battle right now with your original OpenAI co-founder, Elon Musk.
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