Altman wishes he could drop out again, pursue new ideas
At DevDay, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman shared his admiration for young creators, saying, "I'm envious of the current generation of 20-year-old dropouts... the amount of stuff you can build, the opportunity in this space is so incredibly wide."
He also admitted that running OpenAI keeps him so busy he can't really chase new startup ideas himself.
Altman's own experience informs his views
Altman himself dropped out of Stanford in 2005 to launch a startup and now leads one of the most influential AI companies.
Thanks to rapid advances in AI, small teams today can build powerful tools much faster than before.
OpenAI has exploded in size, but Altman feels his leadership role limits his freedom to experiment.
The power of experimentation
Altman revealed that many top ChatGPT features came from experimentation rather than strategic foresight.
"If you had asked me when we started ChatGPT what our enduring advantages were going to be, I would have said, 'I have no idea,'" he admitted.
This spirit of experimenting led to unexpected strengths like ChatGPT's memory feature, helping drive their success.