VIDEO: A conversation with Greg Brockman, co-creator of ChatGPT
Brockman, the North Dakota native who co-founded OpenAI, talks with UND President Andy Armacost about philosophy, film, art and AI
On Tuesday, Sept. 26, Greg Brockman, co-founder of OpenAI – the AI research company that produced the ChatGPT program – spoke with UND President Andy Armacost about Artificial Intelligence, among other topics.
Brockman, a Thompson, N.D., native, also is a former UND student. For three years while he was a student at Red River High School in Grand Forks, he took math and other classes at UND.
Brockman and Armacost spoke before a gathering on campus of more than 500 people. The crowd included UND students, faculty and staff, as well as state legislators and high school students from Grand Forks and across the state.
The event also was livestreamed and was watched online by more than 1,200 people.
The video can be found on YouTube. In addition, a time-stamped list of the questions that President Armacost asked Greg Brockman during their conversation can be found below.
Brockman also spoke with UND Today, the University’s news source, after his conversation with UND’s president. That interview has been transcribed in full and is available on the University’s Press Releases website.
Below are the questions, edited for clarity, that President Armacost asks Greg Brockman during their conversation:
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3:00: Tell us about your journey from Thompson, N.D., to where you are now.
7:45: What are your memories of being here at UND? A big shout-out goes here to Ryan Zerr, professor of mathematics, who was sitting in his office one day when you walked by and said, “Hey! I think I’d like to study something here.” At least, that’s my version of the story; what’s yours?
10:19: In your short-lived stay in college, you actually pursued three degrees that are actually an interesting collection. Tell us about that.
10:54: Back to AI: Tell us more about your motivation for ultimately pursuing deep learning and AI.
14:23: When you co-founded OpenAI, did you know that the technology that you were building would have the impact that it has had initially? Tell us about that vision that you had when you co-founded OpenAI.
17:50: When you look out over the next 10 years of AI, where are you expecting to see the next big jumps? And what about the steps toward “artificial general intelligence,” which many consider to be the ultimate goal of human-like intelligence with these machines?
22:23: Ray Kurzweil – the American computer scientist, author, inventor, and futurist – predicted the “singularity” (a system capable of human-level thoughts) would happen in 2045. Your thoughts?
23:45: A question about balancing the risks and the benefits. You do see a role for some kind of international, cross-governmental cooperation to keep things within bounds?
26:07: Let me pull back from the geopolitical context to college campuses. You have a room full of students and educators here; what are you thinking about in terms of the impact of AI on how we educate future students?
28:24: In previous interviews, you’ve talked about AI as a tool that can serve as an always-on teacher or tutor. If this happens, then what will the role be for traditional educators?
30:29: My final question: Actually, I defer to ChatGPT on this one. If ChatGPT could experience emotions, what do you think it would feel if it successfully helps someone? And conversely, when it makes a mistake?
(Editor’s note: In preparation for Greg Brockman’s talk with President Armacost, UND asked ChatGPT to help craft some questions for the president. The above question was one of the ones that ChatGPT suggested.)
33:01: Let me turn now to some questions from our students, who always ask the best questions. This first one comes from Dev, who’s a computer science graduate student and a 2014 graduate of Red River High School in Grand Forks. What are the important lessons you learned in your journey to get where you are today, coming from a small town in the Midwest? And what unique perspectives have you gathered along your experience in AI?
35:05: When you think about the most promising applications of AI in the near future, what do you think about? (This question comes from Lexi, who’s a finance and information-systems major.)
36:33: The next question was actually about the potential for AI in medical practice; this question is from Odelle, a nursing major from India. How about the use of AI in the development of therapies and new drugs?
38:04: This question comes from Madeline, who’s a commercial aviation major from Sequim, Wash.: Do you think that AI will degrade our value of man-made art such as poetry or painting?
40:07: Eve, an eighth grader from Fargo, asks about a topic that she did a science experiment on this year: Will we be able to differentiate between human-created or artificially created art or recipes, etc., and does that make a difference?
42:26: Andrew, an environmental management major from Penn Valley, Calif., asks: What do you think the difference is between human creativity and the way that ChatGPT creates text?
45:05: Jennifer, an English Ph.D. from Massachusetts, asks our final student question: What roles do creativity and hope play in your research?
46:27: I would like to turn our remaining time over to you. Is there a message that you have for people in the room here, in particular the students?
