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sam altman: Taken out of context: OpenAI’s Sam Altman clarifies comments on India competition

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OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said on Saturday that his comments on competing with the company at the ET Conversations event had been taken out of context.

He had said at the event it was “totally hopeless to compete with us (OpenAI) on training foundation models,” citing a hypothetical scenario in which three engineers with $10 million tried to emulate the feat.

Altman was replying Saturday to Tech Mahindra MD and CEO CP Gurnani, who had earlier tweeted: “Dear @sama, from one CEO to another… challenge accepted,” citing the OpenAI CEO’s comment. “OpenAI founder Sam Altman said it’s pretty hopeless for Indian companies to try and compete with them,” Gurnani’s tweet read.

To this Altman tweeted: “This is really taken out of context! The question was about competing with us with $10 million, which I really do think is not going to work. But I still said try! However, I think it’s the wrong question.”

He went on to say: “The right question is what a startup can do that’s never been done before, that will contribute a new thing to the world. I have no doubt Indian startups can and will do that! And no one but the builders can answer that question.”

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Peak XV Partners managing director Rajan Anandan had posed the question to Altman at the event in New Delhi on Wednesday organised by The Economic Times.“If you want to build foundational models, how should we think about that? Where is it that a team from India, three super smart engineers with not $100 million, but let’s say $10 million, could actually build something truly substantial?”

To this, Altman had replied, “The way this works is we’re going to tell you, it’s totally hopeless to compete with us on training foundation models, you shouldn’t try and it’s your job to try anyway. And I believe both of those things. I think it is pretty hopeless.”

On Twitter, in response to Altman’s remark, Anandan had said: “Thank you @sama for the clear answer. As you said, ‘it is hopeless, but you will try anyway’. 5000 years of Indian entrepreneurship has shown us that we should never underestimate the Indian entrepreneur. We do intend to try.”

Gurnani’s subsequent tweet triggered a debate on social media about the capability of Indian startups to build AI products.

Former Swiggy chief technology officer Dale Vaz, who worked at Amazon India previously, also joined in: “This answer by @sama has obviously ruffled feathers across India biz and tech ecosystem. My take is that Sam’s answer was taken out of context. He was answering a very specific question about whether ‘a group of 3 smart engineers with a $10mn budget could build foundational AI models.’ To which, Sam replied No.”

OpenAI took $1 billion of investment, an Azure super computing platform and 375 employees to get to where it is today, Vaz said.

“Is it any surprise that Sam was so prompt and clear in his response to the specific question?” he wrote. “Maybe, if the question was ‘can a well-funded Indian team with a billion dollar investment, long-term investors and the mandate to risk everything build the next OpenAI?’ the answer may have been a resounding Yes!,”

Nikhil Kumar, cofounder of application programming interface (API) infrastructure startup Setu, also chimed in.

“I don’t even know why some people are just trying to do chest thumping and saying challenge accepted,” he tweeted. “The long version of the no would have been: Foundational models are incredibly hard to build. It requires billions of dollars of investments… amazing partnerships for training data, a long-time horizon (which itself is anti VC thesis) and a community of top researchers. Instead, entrepreneurs should think about building their own finetuned models on top of GPT-4 as an example and build strong moats.”

Altman is currently on a world tour having visited countries such as Israel, Jordan, Qatar and the UAE in addition to India. He’s currently in South Korea and is expected to visit Singapore, Indonesia, Japan and Australia next. In India, Altman met Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday.

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OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said on Saturday that his comments on competing with the company at the ET Conversations event had been taken out of context.

He had said at the event it was “totally hopeless to compete with us (OpenAI) on training foundation models,” citing a hypothetical scenario in which three engineers with $10 million tried to emulate the feat.

Altman was replying Saturday to Tech Mahindra MD and CEO CP Gurnani, who had earlier tweeted: “Dear @sama, from one CEO to another… challenge accepted,” citing the OpenAI CEO’s comment. “OpenAI founder Sam Altman said it’s pretty hopeless for Indian companies to try and compete with them,” Gurnani’s tweet read.

To this Altman tweeted: “This is really taken out of context! The question was about competing with us with $10 million, which I really do think is not going to work. But I still said try! However, I think it’s the wrong question.”

He went on to say: “The right question is what a startup can do that’s never been done before, that will contribute a new thing to the world. I have no doubt Indian startups can and will do that! And no one but the builders can answer that question.”

Discover the stories of your interest


Peak XV Partners managing director Rajan Anandan had posed the question to Altman at the event in New Delhi on Wednesday organised by The Economic Times.“If you want to build foundational models, how should we think about that? Where is it that a team from India, three super smart engineers with not $100 million, but let’s say $10 million, could actually build something truly substantial?”

To this, Altman had replied, “The way this works is we’re going to tell you, it’s totally hopeless to compete with us on training foundation models, you shouldn’t try and it’s your job to try anyway. And I believe both of those things. I think it is pretty hopeless.”

On Twitter, in response to Altman’s remark, Anandan had said: “Thank you @sama for the clear answer. As you said, ‘it is hopeless, but you will try anyway’. 5000 years of Indian entrepreneurship has shown us that we should never underestimate the Indian entrepreneur. We do intend to try.”

Gurnani’s subsequent tweet triggered a debate on social media about the capability of Indian startups to build AI products.

Former Swiggy chief technology officer Dale Vaz, who worked at Amazon India previously, also joined in: “This answer by @sama has obviously ruffled feathers across India biz and tech ecosystem. My take is that Sam’s answer was taken out of context. He was answering a very specific question about whether ‘a group of 3 smart engineers with a $10mn budget could build foundational AI models.’ To which, Sam replied No.”

OpenAI took $1 billion of investment, an Azure super computing platform and 375 employees to get to where it is today, Vaz said.

“Is it any surprise that Sam was so prompt and clear in his response to the specific question?” he wrote. “Maybe, if the question was ‘can a well-funded Indian team with a billion dollar investment, long-term investors and the mandate to risk everything build the next OpenAI?’ the answer may have been a resounding Yes!,”

Nikhil Kumar, cofounder of application programming interface (API) infrastructure startup Setu, also chimed in.

“I don’t even know why some people are just trying to do chest thumping and saying challenge accepted,” he tweeted. “The long version of the no would have been: Foundational models are incredibly hard to build. It requires billions of dollars of investments… amazing partnerships for training data, a long-time horizon (which itself is anti VC thesis) and a community of top researchers. Instead, entrepreneurs should think about building their own finetuned models on top of GPT-4 as an example and build strong moats.”

Altman is currently on a world tour having visited countries such as Israel, Jordan, Qatar and the UAE in addition to India. He’s currently in South Korea and is expected to visit Singapore, Indonesia, Japan and Australia next. In India, Altman met Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday.

Stay on top of technology and startup news that matters. Subscribe to our daily newsletter for the latest and must-read tech news, delivered straight to your inbox.

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