OpenAI wants to build a subscription for something like an AI OS, with SDKs and APIs and 'surfaces'
(2025/05/13)
- Reference: 1747117932
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2025/05/13/openai_ceo_altman_no_plans/
- Source link:
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman says his company doesn’t have a master plan but does hope to develop a product that’s akin to a subscription operating system, but for AI, and models that ingest every experience you have in your life
The enfant terrible of AI thought-bubbled those idea in a [1]Q&A session at an early May event called AI Ascent 2025 organized by venture capital firm Sequoia.
During the session, an audience member asked Altman how startups can avoid competing directly with OpenAI and replied: “We want to be people's core AI subscription.”
[2]
“Some of that will be like what you do inside of ChatGPT. But mostly we will hopefully build this smarter and smarter model. We'll have these surfaces like future devices future things that are sort of similar to operating systems,” he added.
[3]
[4]
Altman offered few details about how this would work.
“We have not yet figured out exactly … what the sort of API or SDK or whatever you want to call it is … to like really be our platform,” he said before reassuring the audience “It may take us a few tries but we will.”
[5]
Whatever the company develops, he expressed the hope it enables “an unbelievable amount of wealth creation” because “there is a ton of stuff to build” alongside whatever OpenAI cooks up.
[6]US Copyright Office found AI companies sometimes breach copyright. Next day its boss was fired
[7]OpenAI drafts Instacart boss as CEO of Apps to lure in the normies
[8]OpenAI caves to pressure, keeps nonprofit in charge
[9]OpenAI pulls plug on ChatGPT smarmbot that praised user for ditching psychiatric meds
Asked if OpenAI plans to create custom AI models, Altman said his “Platonic” ideal is a reasoning model “with a trillion tokens of context that you put your whole life into.”
Such models would be aware of “every conversation you've ever had in your life, every book you've ever read, every email you've ever read. Everything you've ever looked at is in there, plus all your data from other sources. And you know your life just keeps appending to the context.”
If you don’t like the sound of that, we have good news and bad news. The good is that Altman admitted OpenAI can’t build this now. The bad is he said: “Anything else is a compromise of that platonic ideal”.
That plan also seems to be more aspirational than real, as when asked if OpenAI has firm plans for how to spend the massive investments it is seeking he replied “We're going to like try to make great models and ship good products and there's no master plan beyond that.”
[10]
Grander plans, he said, don’t work because entrepreneurs must work backwards from a “crazy complex thing”.
He prefers to “do the things in front of you”, which for OpenAI currently means building “tons of AI infrastructure” and “to keep making models better.” The CEO also wants to “build a great top of the stack like kind of consumer product and all the pieces that go into that.”
Details? He’ll work them out as he goes along.
“We pride ourselves on being like nimble and adjusting tactics as the world adjusts,” Altman said. “The products that we're going to build next year we're probably not even thinking about right now.”
Which sounds a lot like the world’s leading AI company is making it up as it goes along.
What a time to be alive. ®
Get our [11]Tech Resources
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ctcMA6chfDY
[2] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/aiml&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2aCMYP1889TeecXgYWLOb9AAAA1M&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/aiml&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44aCMYP1889TeecXgYWLOb9AAAA1M&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/aiml&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33aCMYP1889TeecXgYWLOb9AAAA1M&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[5] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/aiml&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44aCMYP1889TeecXgYWLOb9AAAA1M&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[6] https://www.theregister.com/2025/05/12/us_copyright_office_ai_copyright/
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2025/05/08/openai_apps_chif_instacart/
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2025/05/05/openai_keep_nonprofit_in_charge/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2025/04/30/openai_pulls_plug_on_chatgpt/
[10] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/aiml&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33aCMYP1889TeecXgYWLOb9AAAA1M&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[11] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
The enfant terrible of AI thought-bubbled those idea in a [1]Q&A session at an early May event called AI Ascent 2025 organized by venture capital firm Sequoia.
During the session, an audience member asked Altman how startups can avoid competing directly with OpenAI and replied: “We want to be people's core AI subscription.”
[2]
“Some of that will be like what you do inside of ChatGPT. But mostly we will hopefully build this smarter and smarter model. We'll have these surfaces like future devices future things that are sort of similar to operating systems,” he added.
[3]
[4]
Altman offered few details about how this would work.
“We have not yet figured out exactly … what the sort of API or SDK or whatever you want to call it is … to like really be our platform,” he said before reassuring the audience “It may take us a few tries but we will.”
[5]
Whatever the company develops, he expressed the hope it enables “an unbelievable amount of wealth creation” because “there is a ton of stuff to build” alongside whatever OpenAI cooks up.
[6]US Copyright Office found AI companies sometimes breach copyright. Next day its boss was fired
[7]OpenAI drafts Instacart boss as CEO of Apps to lure in the normies
[8]OpenAI caves to pressure, keeps nonprofit in charge
[9]OpenAI pulls plug on ChatGPT smarmbot that praised user for ditching psychiatric meds
Asked if OpenAI plans to create custom AI models, Altman said his “Platonic” ideal is a reasoning model “with a trillion tokens of context that you put your whole life into.”
Such models would be aware of “every conversation you've ever had in your life, every book you've ever read, every email you've ever read. Everything you've ever looked at is in there, plus all your data from other sources. And you know your life just keeps appending to the context.”
If you don’t like the sound of that, we have good news and bad news. The good is that Altman admitted OpenAI can’t build this now. The bad is he said: “Anything else is a compromise of that platonic ideal”.
That plan also seems to be more aspirational than real, as when asked if OpenAI has firm plans for how to spend the massive investments it is seeking he replied “We're going to like try to make great models and ship good products and there's no master plan beyond that.”
[10]
Grander plans, he said, don’t work because entrepreneurs must work backwards from a “crazy complex thing”.
He prefers to “do the things in front of you”, which for OpenAI currently means building “tons of AI infrastructure” and “to keep making models better.” The CEO also wants to “build a great top of the stack like kind of consumer product and all the pieces that go into that.”
Details? He’ll work them out as he goes along.
“We pride ourselves on being like nimble and adjusting tactics as the world adjusts,” Altman said. “The products that we're going to build next year we're probably not even thinking about right now.”
Which sounds a lot like the world’s leading AI company is making it up as it goes along.
What a time to be alive. ®
Get our [11]Tech Resources
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ctcMA6chfDY
[2] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/aiml&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2aCMYP1889TeecXgYWLOb9AAAA1M&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/aiml&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44aCMYP1889TeecXgYWLOb9AAAA1M&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/aiml&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33aCMYP1889TeecXgYWLOb9AAAA1M&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[5] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/aiml&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44aCMYP1889TeecXgYWLOb9AAAA1M&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[6] https://www.theregister.com/2025/05/12/us_copyright_office_ai_copyright/
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2025/05/08/openai_apps_chif_instacart/
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2025/05/05/openai_keep_nonprofit_in_charge/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2025/04/30/openai_pulls_plug_on_chatgpt/
[10] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/aiml&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33aCMYP1889TeecXgYWLOb9AAAA1M&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[11] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Good AI article in The Times today.
AMBxx
Fun article from James Marriott in The Times today.
Comparing how the introduction of junk food and office work made it easier to be fat vs the introduction of AI making easier to be thick.
He's been practicing
rgjnk
Certainly got the Musk bullshit waffle down to a T now.
No wonder they hate each other so much when they're so alike in so many ways.
Fairly Astute
"Sam Altman says his company doesn’t have a master plan but does hope to develop a product that’s akin to a subscription operating system"
He hasn't asked his "AI" for a master plan?
Does he not trust it to come up with meaningful answers?
Surely that can not be.
The global panopticon edges ever closer
may_i
Thank goodness there is no current way to extract all of the memories in my brain and upload it to Altman and Ellison's dystopian future of constant surveillance.
I won't see this, but I fear for my childrens' future.
making it up as it goes along
Anonymous Coward
Don't they call that hallucinating in the AI world.
So Sam wants to get paid...
While taking other people's stuff for free ?
I don't think so...