Azeem Azhar's Exponential View
OpenAI’s CPO on what’s coming next: Hardware, GPT-5, Jony Ive, agents, more
10 Jun 2025
This week, I'm speaking with Kevin Weil, Chief Product Officer at OpenAI, who is steering product development at what might be the world's most important company right now.We talk about:(00:00) Episode trailer(01:37) OpenAI's latest launches(03:43) What it's like being CPO of OpenAI(04:34) How AI will reshape our lives(07:23) How young people use AI differently(09:29) Addressing fears about AI(11:47) Kevin's "Oh sh!t" moment(14:11) Why have so many models within ChatGPT?(18:19) The unpredictability of AI product progress(24:47) Understanding model “evals”(27:21) How important is prompt engineering?(29:18) Defining “AI agent”(37:00) Why OpenAI views coding as a prime target use-case(41:24) The "next model test” for any AI startup(46:06) Jony Ive's role at OpenAI(47:50) OpenAI's hardware vision(50:41) Quickfire questions(52:43) When will we get AGI?Kevin's links:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevinweil/Twitter/X: @kevinweilAzeem's links:Substack: https://www.exponentialview.co/Website: https://www.azeemazhar.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/azharTwitter/X: https://x.com/azeemOur new show:This was originally recorded for "Friday with Azeem Azhar", a new show that takes place every Friday at 9am PT and 12pm ET. You can tune in through Exponential View on Substack.Produced by supermix.io and EPIIPLUS1 Ltd. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
Full Episode
We're in this transition from ChatGPT being a thing that answers questions to a product that actually goes and does tasks for you in the real world. You should be in control of any actions that it takes. The best way to do that is to kind of co-evolve together.
Sam has sort of talked a little bit about generational differences. So what is it like if you're in your early 20s, you're using ChatGPT?
a core part of the way you operate your life. There's sort of an always-on nature. You realize that you have this super assistant in your pocket that can not just answer any question, but it can teach you anything that you want to learn.
How far out are model capabilities being delivered? Are there things that are being worked on today that might not make their way into models until mid-2026?
It's unpredictable. Sometimes things take longer than expected. Other times you see these capabilities that you didn't expect at all that are kind of emergent and all of a sudden something just works. It's a completely different way of building products. Computers can like do things that they couldn't do two months ago and we're constantly in that state.
Today, I'm so excited to welcome Kevin Weil. He is the Chief Product Officer of OpenAI, coming off the back of a storied career in companies like Twitter and Facebook. So much to talk about. So first of all, Kevin, thank you for making the time. You've been busy today already. It's morning in San Francisco, and you've already launched some things.
Yes, we have. And thank you so much for having me. It's my first live Substack, so I'm excited. but hopefully many more to come.
You are really keeping us on your toes. And so just an hour before we went live, there was another spate of product launches from OpenAI. What do they tell us about your vision for ChatGPT and where the product is going?
The biggest thing that we launched this morning, we launched like six different things this morning, but I think the most important one kind of for the long-term future of AI is we launched a series of connectors that can connect to your either personal data or if you're an enterprise, your enterprise data.
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