TED 2025AI & Technology

Sam Altman at TED 2025: The Future of AI

OpenAI's CEO discusses the rapid evolution of AI, safety challenges, and the path toward AGI

Sam Altman

CEO, OpenAI

Leading the development of ChatGPT and GPT models

TED 2025
~60 minutes
500M+ weekly users
Talk Summary

Sam Altman showcased OpenAI's latest capabilities including Sora video generation and advanced reasoning models, while addressing concerns about AI safety, creative rights, and the path toward Artificial General Intelligence. He emphasized the importance of iterative deployment, open source models, and building AI systems that amplify human creativity rather than replace it.

Key Announcements & Capabilities
Latest developments from OpenAI

ChatGPT Growth

500M+

Weekly active users

Sora Video Generation

Advanced video creation from text prompts

Memory Feature

AI that learns and remembers across conversations

Open Source Plans

Powerful open source model coming soon

Notable Quotes
Key insights from Sam Altman's talk
"I believe very deeply that humans will be at the center of that. I also believe that we probably do need to figure out some sort of new model around the economics of creative output."
"The thing that I'm personally most excited about is AI for science at this point. I think, I am a big believer that the most important driver of the world and people's lives getting better and better is new scientific discovery."
"My kid, my kids hopefully, will never be smarter than AI. They will never grow up in a world where products and services are not incredibly smart, incredibly capable."
"We are in this unbelievable exponential curve... this thing is not going to stop. It's going to go way beyond what any of us would call AGI."
AI Safety & Governance

Safety Framework:

"We have this preparedness framework that outlines how we do that... we've tried to outline where we think the most important danger moments are or what the categories are, how we measure that and how we would mitigate something before releasing it."

On Agentic AI:

"AI that you give access to your systems, your information, the ability to click around on your computer, now those, you know, when AI makes a mistake, it's much higher stakes."

Iterative Deployment:

"The way we learn how to build safe systems is this iterative process of deploying them to the world, getting feedback while the stakes are relatively low, learning about like, hey, this is something we have to address."

Creative Rights & New Economic Models
Addressing concerns about AI and creativity

Current Approach

  • • Won't generate in style of living artists
  • • Exploring opt-in revenue models
  • • Building tools that amplify creativity
  • • Democratizing access to creative tools

Future Vision

  • • New business models for creators
  • • Revenue sharing mechanisms
  • • Enhanced creative capabilities
  • • Better tools for all creators
The Path to AGI
Defining and approaching Artificial General Intelligence

Current Limitations:

  • • Cannot continuously learn and improve
  • • Cannot discover new science and update understanding
  • • Cannot perform complex knowledge work autonomously
  • • Still "embarrassingly bad" at many tasks

Future Capabilities:

"Different people will call it AGI at different points, but we all agree it's going to go way past that, you know, to whatever you want to call these systems that get much more capable than we are."

Personal Reflections
Sam Altman on leadership, responsibility, and the future

On Parenthood:

"Having a kid changed a lot of things and by far the most amazing thing that has ever happened to me... I don't know what the meaning of life is, but for sure it has something to do with babies."

On Power & Responsibility:

"Shockingly, the same as before. I think you, you can get used to anything step by step... the monotony of day-to-day life, which I mean in the best possible way, feels exactly the same."

Vision for His Son's Future:

"My kids hopefully, will never be smarter than AI... It'll be a world of incredible material abundance. It'll be a world where the rate of change is incredibly fast and amazing new things are happening."

Live Demonstrations
AI capabilities showcased during the talk

Sora Video Generation

Generated video of Sam sharing "shocking revelations" at TED

"Very close to what I'm wearing, you know? Maybe a B+."

Intelligence vs Consciousness

Created diagram showing difference between intelligence and consciousness

"This is so simple, but it's incredible."

Charlie Brown AI

Generated meta-commentary on AI consciousness

"There's really no way to know if it is thinking that or it just saw that a lot of times in the training set."

O1 Pro Reasoning

Generated penetrating question about moral authority

"It thought about it for two minutes. Two minutes."