Original English text

Reflections

The second birthday of ChatGPT was only a little over a month ago, and now we have transitioned into the next paradigm of models that can do complex reasoning. New years get people in a reflective mood, and I wanted to share some personal thoughts about how it has gone so far, and some of the things I’ve learned along the way.

As we get closer to AGI, it feels like an important time to look at the progress of our company. There is still so much to understand, still so much we don’t know, and it’s still so early. But we know a lot more than we did when we started.

We started OpenAI almost nine years ago because we believed that AGI was possible, and that it could be the most impactful technology in human history. We wanted to figure out how to build it and make it broadly beneficial; we were excited to try to make our mark on history. Our ambitions were extraordinarily high and so was our belief that the work might benefit society in an equally extraordinary way.

At the time, very few people cared, and if they did, it was mostly because they thought we had no chance of success.

In 2022, OpenAI was a quiet research lab working on something temporarily called “Chat With GPT-3.5”. (We are much better at research than we are at naming things.) We had been watching people use the playground feature of our API and knew that developers were really enjoying talking to the model. We thought building a demo around that experience would show people something important about the future and help us make our models better and safer.

We ended up mercifully calling it ChatGPT instead, and launched it on November 30th of 2022.

We always knew, abstractly, that at some point we would hit a tipping point and the AI revolution would get kicked off. But we didn’t know what the moment would be. To our surprise, it turned out to be this.

The launch of ChatGPT kicked off a growth curve like nothing we have ever seen—in our company, our industry, and the world broadly. We are finally seeing some of the massive upside we have always hoped for from AI, and we can see how much more will come soon.

It hasn’t been easy. The road hasn’t been smooth and the right choices haven’t been obvious.

In the last two years, we had to build an entire company, almost from scratch, around this new technology. There is no way to train people for this except by doing it, and when the technology category is completely new, there is no one at all who can tell you exactly how it should be done.

Building up a company at such high velocity with so little training is a messy process. It’s often two steps forward, one step back (and sometimes, one step forward and two steps back). Mistakes get corrected as you go along, but there aren’t really any handbooks or guideposts when you’re doing original work. Moving at speed in uncharted waters is an incredible experience, but it is also immensely stressful for all the players. Conflicts and misunderstanding abound.

These years have been the most rewarding, fun, best, interesting, exhausting, stressful, and—particularly for the last two—unpleasant years of my life so far. The overwhelming feeling is gratitude; I know that someday I’ll be retired at our ranch watching the plants grow, a little bored, and will think back at how cool it was that I got to do the work I dreamed of since I was a little kid. I try to remember that on any given Friday, when seven things go badly wrong by 1 pm.

A little over a year ago, on one particular Friday, the main thing that had gone wrong that day was that I got fired by surprise on a video call, and then right after we hung up the board published a blog post about it. I was in a hotel room in Las Vegas. It felt, to a degree that is almost impossible to explain, like a dream gone wrong.

Getting fired in public with no warning kicked off a really crazy few hours, and a pretty crazy few days. The “fog of war” was the strangest part. None of us were able to get satisfactory answers about what had happened, or why.

The whole event was, in my opinion, a big failure of governance by well-meaning people, myself included. Looking back, I certainly wish I had done things differently, and I’d like to believe I’m a better, more thoughtful leader today than I was a year ago.

I also learned the importance of a board with diverse viewpoints and broad experience in managing a complex set of challenges. Good governance requires a lot of trust and credibility. I appreciate the way so many people worked together to build a stronger system of governance for OpenAI that enables us to pursue our mission of ensuring that AGI benefits all of humanity.

My biggest takeaway is how much I have to be thankful for and how many people I owe gratitude towards: to everyone who works at OpenAI and has chosen to spend their time and effort going after this dream, to friends who helped us get through the crisis moments, to our partners and customers who supported us and entrusted us to enable their success, and to the people in my life who showed me how much they cared.^[1]

We all got back to the work in a more cohesive and positive way and I’m very proud of our focus since then. We have done what is easily some of our best research ever. We grew from about 100 million weekly active users to more than 300 million. Most of all, we have continued to put technology out into the world that people genuinely seem to love and that solves real problems.

Nine years ago, we really had no idea what we were eventually going to become; even now, we only sort of know. AI development has taken many twists and turns and we expect more in the future.

Some of the twists have been joyful; some have been hard. It’s been fun watching a steady stream of research miracles occur, and a lot of naysayers have become true believers. We’ve also seen some colleagues split off and become competitors. Teams tend to turn over as they scale, and OpenAI scales really fast. I think some of this is unavoidable—startups usually see a lot of turnover at each new major level of scale, and at OpenAI numbers go up by orders of magnitude every few months. The last two years have been like a decade at a normal company. When any company grows and evolves so fast, interests naturally diverge. And when any company in an important industry is in the lead, lots of people attack it for all sorts of reasons, especially when they are trying to compete with it.

Our vision won’t change; our tactics will continue to evolve. For example, when we started we had no idea we would have to build a product company; we thought we were just going to do great research. We also had no idea we would need such a crazy amount of capital. There are new things we have to go build now that we didn’t understand a few years ago, and there will be new things in the future we can barely imagine now.

We are proud of our track-record on research and deployment so far, and are committed to continuing to advance our thinking on safety and benefits sharing. We continue to believe that the best way to make an AI system safe is by iteratively and gradually releasing it into the world, giving society time to adapt and co-evolve with the technology, learning from experience, and continuing to make the technology safer. We believe in the importance of being world leaders on safety and alignment research, and in guiding that research with feedback from real world applications.

We are now confident we know how to build AGI as we have traditionally understood it. We believe that, in 2025, we may see the first AI agents “join the workforce” and materially change the output of companies. We continue to believe that iteratively putting great tools in the hands of people leads to great, broadly-distributed outcomes.

We are beginning to turn our aim beyond that, to superintelligence in the true sense of the word. We love our current products, but we are here for the glorious future. With superintelligence, we can do anything else. Superintelligent tools could massively accelerate scientific discovery and innovation well beyond what we are capable of doing on our own, and in turn massively increase abundance and prosperity.

This sounds like science fiction right now, and somewhat crazy to even talk about it. That’s alright—we’ve been there before and we’re OK with being there again. We’re pretty confident that in the next few years, everyone will see what we see, and that the need to act with great care, while still maximizing broad benefit and empowerment, is so important. Given the possibilities of our work, OpenAI cannot be a normal company.

How lucky and humbling it is to be able to play a role in this work.

(Thanks to Josh Tyrangiel for sort of prompting this. I wish we had had a lot more time.)

中文译版

反思

ChatGPT 两周年纪念日才过去一个多月，现在我们已经过渡到能够进行复杂推理的下一代模型范式。新年伊始，人们总会陷入反思，我也想分享一些关于 ChatGPT 至今发展历程的个人感想，以及我在此过程中学到的一些经验。

随着我们越来越接近通用人工智能（AGI），现在正是回顾公司发展历程的重要时刻。我们还有很多需要了解的地方，还有很多未知领域，一切都还处于早期阶段。但与公司创立之初相比，我们现在掌握的信息已经丰富得多。

我们大约九年前创立了 OpenAI，因为我们坚信通用人工智能（AGI）是可能的，并且它可能成为人类历史上最具影响力的技术。我们想要探索如何构建它，并使其惠及大众；我们渴望在历史上留下自己的印记。我们的雄心壮志无比远大，我们也坚信这项工作将以同样非凡的方式造福社会。

当时，很少有人关心这件事，即使有人关心，也大多是因为他们认为我们没有成功的机会。

2022 年，OpenAI 还是一个安静的研究实验室，当时正在开发一个暂名为“与 GPT-3.5 聊天”的项目。（我们更擅长研究，而不是起名字。）我们一直在观察人们使用我们 API 的 Playground 功能，发现开发者们非常喜欢与模型互动。我们认为，围绕这种体验构建一个演示，可以向人们展示一些关于未来的重要信息，并帮助我们改进模型，使其更加安全。

我们最终还是决定将其命名为 ChatGPT，并于 2022 年 11 月 30 日发布。

我们一直都抽象地知道，总有一天我们会遇到一个临界点，人工智能革命将会由此拉开序幕。但我们不知道这个时刻会是什么时候。出乎我们意料的是，它竟然是现在。

ChatGPT 的推出开启了前所未有的增长曲线——无论是在我们公司、我们所在的行业，还是在整个世界范围内。我们终于看到了人工智能一直以来带来的巨大潜力，而且我们预见到未来还将有更多惊喜。

这并不容易。这条路并不平坦，正确的选择也并非显而易见。

过去两年，我们几乎是从零开始，围绕这项新技术打造了一家完整的公司。除了实践之外，没有其他方法可以培训员工，而当一项技术完全是全新的领域时，根本没有人能告诉你确切的实施方法。

在如此短的时间内以如此高的速度建立一家公司，培训又如此匮乏，这注定是一个混乱的过程。通常情况下，前进两步，后退一步（有时甚至是前进一步，后退两步）。错误会在摸索中逐步纠正，但当你进行原创工作时，实际上并没有任何现成的手册或指南可供参考。在未知的领域快速前进固然是一种令人难以置信的体验，但对所有参与者来说也压力巨大。冲突和误解层出不穷。

这些年是我人生至今为止最充实、最快乐、最精彩、最有趣、也最疲惫、压力最大，尤其是最近两年——最不愉快的几年。我最强烈的感受是感激；我知道总有一天我会退休，在我们的农场里看着植物生长，可能会有点无聊，但我会回想起自己能够从事从小就梦想的工作是多么棒。每当周五下午一点之前七件糟糕的事情接踵而至时，我都会努力记住这一点。

一年多前的一个星期五，那天最不顺心的事莫过于我在一次视频通话中被突然解雇，通话结束后董事会立刻在博客上发布了相关消息。当时我正在拉斯维加斯的一家酒店房间里。那种感觉，几乎难以言喻，就像一场噩梦破灭了。

在没有任何预警的情况下被公开解雇，开启了接下来几个小时乃至几天的疯狂之旅。“战争迷雾”是最令人费解的部分。我们谁也无法得到关于究竟发生了什么、为什么会被解雇的满意答案。

在我看来，整件事都是包括我在内的许多好心人管理上的重大失败。回想起来，我当然希望当初能采取不同的做法，而且我相信，如今的我比一年前更优秀、更周全。

我还了解到，拥有多元观点和丰富经验的董事会对于应对一系列复杂挑战至关重要。良好的治理需要高度的信任和信誉。我非常感谢众多人士齐心协力，为 OpenAI 构建了更强大的治理体系，使我们能够继续推进“通用人工智能造福全人类”的使命。

我最大的感悟是，我应该心怀感激，感谢很多人：感谢所有在 OpenAI 工作并选择投入时间和精力去追逐这个梦想的人；感谢帮助我们度过危机时刻的朋友们；感谢支持我们并信任我们，让我们助力他们成功的合作伙伴和客户；感谢我生命中那些让我感受到他们关爱的人。[1]

我们以更加团结、积极的态度重新投入工作，我为我们此后的专注感到非常自豪。我们完成了迄今为止最出色的研究成果。我们的周活跃用户从约1亿增长到超过3亿。最重要的是，我们持续推出真正受用户喜爱、能够解决实际问题的技术。

九年前，我们对未来究竟会发展成什么样子完全没有概念；即使现在，我们也只是略知一二。人工智能的发展经历了许多曲折，我们预计未来还会有更多变化。

有些转折令人欣喜，有些则充满挑战。看着源源不断的研究成果令人振奋，许多曾经的怀疑者也变成了真正的信徒。我们也看到一些同事离职，成为了竞争对手。团队规模扩大后人员更迭在所难免，而OpenAI的扩张速度更是惊人。我认为其中一些情况是不可避免的——初创公司通常在每次达到新的规模时都会经历大量的人员流动，而OpenAI的员工数量每隔几个月就会呈指数级增长。过去两年对OpenAI来说，相当于一家普通公司十年的发展历程。任何公司如果发展如此迅速，利益自然会出现分歧。当一家重要行业的公司处于领先地位时，很多人会出于各种原因攻击它，尤其是在他们试图与之竞争的时候。

我们的愿景不会改变，但我们的策略会不断演进。例如，创业之初，我们根本没想过要打造一家产品公司；我们当时的想法只是做好市场调研。我们也没想到会需要如此巨额的资金。现在我们需要开发一些几年前我们还无法想象的新事物，未来还会涌现出许多我们现在几乎无法想象的新事物。

我们为迄今为止在研究和部署方面取得的成就感到自豪，并致力于继续推进我们在安全性和利益共享方面的思考。我们始终认为，确保人工智能系统安全的最佳途径是迭代式、逐步地将其推向世界，给予社会时间去适应并与这项技术共同发展，从经验中学习，并不断提升技术的安全性。我们相信，在安全性和一致性研究领域保持世界领先地位至关重要，并且需要利用来自实际应用的反馈来指导研究。

我们现在确信，我们已经掌握了构建传统意义上的通用人工智能（AGI）的方法。我们相信，到2025年，我们或许会看到首批人工智能代理“加入劳动力市场”，并从根本上改变企业的产出。我们始终坚信，不断将强大的工具交付到人们手中，最终将带来惠及大众的卓越成果。

我们正开始将目标转向更远的地方，追求真正意义上的超级智能。我们热爱我们现有的产品，但我们着眼于更美好的未来。有了超级智能，我们将无所不能。超级智能工具能够极大地加速科学发现和创新，远远超越我们自身的能力，进而极大地提升物质财富和繁荣程度。

这听起来像是科幻小说，甚至谈论它都有些疯狂。没关系——我们以前经历过，也乐于再次面对。我们相当确信，在未来几年里，所有人都会看到我们所看到的，届时，谨慎行事，同时最大限度地造福大众、赋能于民，将变得至关重要。鉴于我们工作的可能性，OpenAI 无法成为一家普通的公司。

能够参与这项工作，我感到无比幸运和荣幸。

（感谢Josh Tyrangiel 的启发。真希望我们有更多的时间。）

The original text is from Sam Altman - https://blog.samaltman.com/reflections