Sam Altman

The whole thing was like totally over in five days.

It's like very strange fever dream and then like back to work picking up the pieces.

Right.

What did you learn lesson wise?

I actually, maybe I was wrong.

Maybe it was only four days.

I think it was four days.

I learned a bunch of stuff that I would do differently next time about how we communicated during and after that process and like the need to just sort of be direct and clear about what's happening.

I think there was this like cloud of suspicion over OpenAI for a long time that we could have done a better job with.

I knew I worked with great people, but seeing how good the team was in a crisis and in a stressful situation with uncertainty, one of the proudest moments for me was watching the executive team kind of operate without me.

for a little while and knowing that any of them would be perfectly capable of running the company.

And I felt a lot of pride both about picking those people, about teaching them to whatever degree I did, and just that the company was in a very strong place.

It did feel nice, but that's not the thing that like sticks in.

I remember feeling like very proud of the team, but not for that reason.

I don't do the research.

I don't build the products.

I make some decisions, but not most of them.

The thing I get to build is the company.

So that is certainly the thing I have pride of authorship over.

So what do you actually do?