OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Chief Operating Officer Brad Lightcap were interviewed by Kevin Roose, a columnist with The New York Times, and Platformer’s Casey Newton for Hard Fork, New York Times’ technology podcast. Altman lost no time in asking “Are you going to talk about where you sue us because you don’t like user privacy?”
Altman was referring to The New York Times lawsuit against OpenAI and its largest investor, Microsoft, in which the publisher alleges that Altman’s company improperly used its articles to train large language models. Altman was particularly bothered by a court order demanding the retention of chat logs for an indefinite period of time. This court order was issued after news organizations — including New York Times — suing over copyright claims accused the AI company of destroying evidence, and expressed concerns that ChatGPT might be used to bypass paywalls and “delete their searches to cover their tracks.”
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“The New York Times, one of the great institutions, truly, for a long time, is taking a position that we should have to preserve our users’ logs even if they’re chatting in private mode, even if they’ve asked us to delete them,” said Altman. “Still love The New York Times, but that one we feel strongly about.” He also asked the podcasters to share their views on the matter, however they refused, saying that as journalists whose work appears in The New York Times, they are not involved in the lawsuit.
However, this discussion lasted only for a few minutes, and Altman and Lightcap moved on to discuss other topics. Altman said that he had productive talks with President Donald Trump, about AI and credited him with understanding the geopolitical and economic importance of the technology.
“I think he really gets it,” Altman said. “I think he really understands the importance of leadership in this technology.”
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Altman and Lightcap also touched on other topics including AI’s effect on jobs, the grab for technological talent by Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg and regulatory and safety concerns about the technology. Lightcap stated that he agreed with the idea that AI would change the way jobs worked. “I think that there is going to be some sort of change,” he said. “I think it’s inevitable. I think every time you get a platform shift, you get the changing job market.”
Altman also said he agreed that there is a need to regulate AI, however it would be difficult to offer services if regulations varied by state. “As these systems get quite powerful, we clearly need something,” he said. “And I think something around the really risky capabilities and ideally something that can be quite adaptive and not like a law that survives 100 years.”