Greg Brockman: Inside the 72 Hours That Almost Killed OpenAI

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TweetEmailLinkedInPrintThe Knowledge Project PodcastGreg Brockman: Inside the 72 Hours That Almost Killed OpenAI

The AI race, the future of AGI, and the inside story of OpenAI.
Greg Brockman is the co-founder and President of OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT and GPT-5. He was the first engineer at Stripe before leaving in 2015 to help start OpenAI.
In this rare conversation, Greg goes inside the moments that built, and nearly broke, the most important AI company in the world.

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Featured clips

06:05

Breakthrough Moments at OpenAI

15:44

Sam Altman's Firing

32:22

Is AI Going Parabolic?

40:38

Why ChatGPT No Longer Shows Reasoning

01:04:44

AI and Job Loss

Available Now: YouTube | Spotify | Apple Podcasts | Transcript
Greg explains how the original Napa offsite produced the three-step technical plan OpenAI has followed for a decade and the real reason OpenAI had to abandon its pure nonprofit structure. He then walks through the 72 hours after Sam Altman was fired: where he was when he got the board call, why he quit the same day, how the “Phoenix” backup company was designed at Sam’s house the next morning, and the moment Ilya Sutskever’s tweet changed everything.
From there, the conversation turns forward: whether we’re in a global AI race, how much of OpenAI’s own code is now written by AI (“it’s hard to know what percent is not“), why OpenAI stopped showing reasoning traces, what a compute-constrained world means for who gets access to AGI, and Greg’s answer to the question everyone is really asking: What happens to your job?
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Greg Brockman, as the co-founder and President of OpenAI, provides an inside look at the critical moments during the development of the company, particularly the 72 hours surrounding a pivotal event. Brockman began his journey there as an engineer at Stripe before leaving to help establish OpenAI. In the conversation, he details the process that led to the three-step technical plan OpenAI has followed over the last decade, as well as the reasons behind the decision to abandon the pure nonprofit structure. Furthermore, he recounts the sequence of events following Sam Altman’s firing, describing his position when he received the board call, his subsequent decision to resign the same day, the design of the "Phoenix" backup company established at Sam’s residence the following morning, and the transformative impact of Ilya Sutskever’s tweet. Beyond these historical events, the discussion shifts to examining broader themes related to the rapidly evolving artificial intelligence landscape. Brockman addresses concerns about the global AI race and an exploration of how much of OpenAI's own code is now generated by artificial intelligence, noting the difficulty in quantifying the exact percentage. He also discusses the rationale behind OpenAI’s decision to stop displaying reasoning traces in their outputs. The conversation further delves into the implications of a compute-constrained world concerning access to artificial general intelligence and addresses the fundamental question of what happens to employment in this context.