OpenAI’s Head of ChatGPT: We’re entering a new era of AI (again) | Tibo Sottiaux
Lenny's Podcast: Product | Career | Growth
Tibo Sottiaux, Head of ChatGPT and Codex at OpenAI, joins Lenny to discuss the launch of Dots, a persistent personal AI agent designed to learn user
Key takeaways
- Tibo Sottiaux leads ChatGPT and Codex at OpenAI and recently launched Dots, an always-on personal agent that learns preferences without requiring model pickers or complex configuration.
- OpenAI plans to merge ChatGPT Work and Consumer into a single interface, eventually shipping all Dots capabilities to its 1.2 billion users to eliminate friction.
Main topics
- Dots personal AI assistant launch and architecture
- Agent-driven internet workflows and platform scale
Notable quotes
"The majority of actions on the internet will be taken by agents."
Conclusion
The episode provides a concrete look at how persistent AI agents will reshape
Transcript preview
Speaker 2 (0:00) Often when I look at what people are building out there, it's just like, you're not quite getting it. You know, if you were just like pushing yourself and just really imagining like all of this being roughly 10 times better than it is today, you know, like in a year, you would build in a different way. What do you think people aren't pricing in, in terms of where things are going? The majority of actions on the internet will be taken by agents. If you want... your product to be successful for agents, you have to build for a certain level of scale. Speaker 1 (0:23) How many agents do you find yourself running in parallel just in your day-to-day work? As I'm pushing the frontier, I find myself building Speaker 2 (0:29) larger and larger teams of agents. And then when we have the next... breakthrough with models, like suddenly it's just a guy like, oh, well, you know, a bigger agent can just do all of it. And so I kind of shrink the team again. And then it just kind of goes through this expansion and shrinking expansion. It Speaker 1 (0:43) kind of makes me think about there's this whole loops thing and then this whole graphs thing. Speaker 2 (0:46) Having to set up and fiddle with your loops is something that maybe people got excited about, but I don't think this is the way that it's going to work. Over time, you just want the system that learns. You don't want to necessarily think about, oh, I was just like, I'm going to loop it exactly this way in order to get results. Do you think there's still more radical change Speaker 1 (1:02) happening to how we work? It's Speaker 2 (1:03) going to Speaker 1 (1:04) continue to change quite Speaker 2 (1:05) radically. Even today, it still feels like a bit clunky, and I think it will feel clunky until it isn't. Speaker 1 (1:15) Tipo, thank you for doing this. Yeah. Thanks for having me. Of course. Nice room. You launched a ton of stuff today. How's your sleep? How are you sleeping? Are you doing all right? I'm doing great. Speaker 2 (1:27) I'm fortunate to have a very good team. So while I sleep, they were awake most of the night. We have this amazing room at the office called The Library, which we completely repurposed as like a mega war room. And the vibes in there are just immaculate. People were there until like very, very late. Speaker 1 (1:44) So you've been a longtime engineer. Are you coding at all anymore? Are you shipping PRs? Are you mostly like in docs and meetings now? What is coding? Exactly. Yeah. Are you shipping PRs? I don't know. Yeah, Speaker 2 (1:57) yeah. Merging some code every once in a while. Technically, like a lot of code is getting written for me to do all sorts of kinds of like analysis, like, you know, understand like trends, understand the business, understand the next feature, you know, how well our previous launches are doing. A lot of code is written by Codex. for that. You know, I'm obviously not writing it by hand anymore. Occasionally during the weekends, I'll have like a little therapeutic moment where I do a little lead code just by hand. But that's the only actual hand coding that I do. Speaker 1 (2:26) How many agents do you find yourself running in parallel just in your day-to-day work? Speaker 2 (2:30) I used to run a lot more in parallel and then we were, you know, fortunate enough to get a breakthrough at Ultrafast. And so... Now, you know, I feel like, you know, I'm able to be in the flow again. And so just having a faster agent helps me a lot. I'm excited that we're getting, you know, 6.1 Sol ultra fast out there soon. And then, yeah, I think it sort of varies as I'm kind of like pushing the frontier. I find myself like, you know, building larger and larger teams of agents. And then when we have the next breakthrough with models, like suddenly it's just a guy like, oh, well, you know. a bigger agent can just do all of it and keep everything in memory and learn. And so I kind of shrink the team again. And then it just kind of goes through this expansion and shrinking expansion. Speaker 1 (3:11) Can you say more about that? It kind of makes me think about there's this whole loops thing and then this whole graphs thing. Is this like an evolution of that in some way? I Speaker 2 (3:19) think like having to set up and fiddle with your loops and, you know, figuring that out is something that, you know, maybe people got excited about, but I don't think this is the way that it's going to work. I think the way that it's going to work is a... how we're positioning and what we're shipping with dots, where you have an incredibly smart agent that works 24-7, understands your goals, understands your preferences, learns from feedback. And, you know, it's like, what we launched is like not perfect. I will learn very much from, you know, making this available to our pro users. But over time, you just want the system that learns from, you know, what you want to achieve. You don't want to necessarily think about, oh, I was just like, I'm going to loop it exactly this way in order to get results. Speaker 1 (4:00) So right now there's Codex, there's ChatGPT Work, there's ChatGPT Consumer, there's Dots. What I'm hearing is you think we're heading towards Dots kind of being the primary way you talk to AI and that kicks off all these other things. Speaker 2 (4:12) Yeah, I think fundamentally, if you take a step back and, you know, whether it's Dots or not, it's all about breaking free from the technology and having this sort of like permanent active intelligence that knows. you know, everything it needs to do and is available through any client, any screen, you can call it, you know, like maybe you walk into a meeting room, it shows up in the meeting, it takes notes, you know, you pick it back up on email and then, you know, you text it if you need it. It's not that, you know, you need to be glued to a laptop or, you know, you're like always on your phone. It's just like, it's available when you need it. And it's also like gets out of the way when you don't need it. And I can't wait, you know, for that to sort of like come to fruition because I think like just carrying your laptop as like this brick around everywhere is just like, you know, you're kind of like tied to the technology instead of the technology working for you. This Speaker 1 (5:06) episode is brought to you by our season's presenting sponsor, WorkOS. What do OpenAI, Anthropic, Cursor, Replit, Sierra, Clay, and hundreds of other winning companies all have in common? They are all powered by WorkOS. If you're building a product for the enterprise, you've felt the pain of integrating single sign-on, skim, R-back, audit logs, and other features required by large companies. WorkOS turns those deal blockers into drop-in APIs with a modern developer platform built specifically for B2B SaaS. Literally every startup that I'm an investor in that starts to expand upmarket ends up working with WorkOS. And that's because they are the best. Whether you are a seed stage startup trying to land your first enterprise customer or a unicorn expanding globally. WorkOS is the fastest path to becoming enterprise-ready and unblocking growth. It's essentially Stripe for enterprise features. Visit WorkOS.com to get started or just hit up their Slack where they have actual engineers waiting to answer your questions. WorkOS allows you to build faster with delightful APIs, comprehensive docs, and a smooth developer experience. Go to WorkOS.com to make your app enterprise-ready today. Speaker 1 (6:16) I was going to ask you about this. It feels like so much has changed in how we work over the past two years. In two years, especially engineers, but a lot of roles have just the role. Your day-to-day life has changed significantly. And I'm curious if you think we're kind of settling into what work will look like in the next, I don't know, five years. Let's say two years. That feels way too far to think about. Or do you think there's still more radical change happening to how we work? Oh, I think it's going to continue to change quite Speaker 2 (6:43) radically. Even today. You know, it does seem like the technology is finally coming together with voice, you know, multimodal inputs, outputs, but it still feels like a bit clunky. And I think it will feel clunky until it isn't. And then you're just like, wow, you know, like I can just talk to this thing the same way that we're talking right now. It just remembers things perfectly. If I want to, you know, ideate and brainstorm, it can just like, you know, squiggle the thing. I have this collaborative surface. You know, this is what we launched with ChatterBt Space. It's like, you know, the very start of that. You know, you can imagine we have like a shared whiteboard. We can collaborate between humans, between agents. And I think it's going to sort of like transcend conversations, transcend, you know, like a lot of the clients that you have today. And like, none of this is just really working today, right? So I think that we're going to go through this big new transformation. Speaker 1 (7:32) But I'm hearing yours, DOTS is a big part of that future. This AI system that just kind of does everything for you. And you don't have to think about Codex versus ChatterBt. Speaker 2 (7:39) Yes, and for Codex and ChatGPT, we're going to merge, like, we have chat, we have the work Speaker 1 (7:45) toggle, you know, we heard the feedback loud Speaker 2 (7:47) and clear, like, you know, people love the capability in work, but then also, you know, you're like, sometimes you want to use chat because it's a little bit faster and, you know, more pleasant to use. And so we're merging that, we're reducing that complexity. Eventually, we will ship all of the capabilities of Dots, you know, straight into ChatGPT as well and, you know, lift the floor for, like, our 1.2 billion users, which, Speaker 1 (8:05) you know, Speaker 2 (8:05) at that time, we'll see, like, how many we have. And we want it to be really, really seamless. One thing that I'm very excited with Dots is like they don't have a model picker. There's just no configuration. You just talk to it. The only thing that you have to configure is like which channels you want to talk to. Speaker 1 (8:20) It feels very much like the horror kind of vision of the world. I don't know. Do you think about that movie much? Just this idea of Speaker 2 (8:26) it? Speaker 1 (8:26) I watched it once. Yeah. Speaker 2 (8:29) I think it's interesting, you know, to think about, you know, maybe more what I think about more is like, you know, sci-fi from... you know, 30, 40 years ago and like how visionary it was. Is there a specific sci-fi Speaker 1 (8:41) you think about that's most influenced Speaker 2 (8:42) you? Like, you Speaker 1 (8:43) know, Speaker 2 (8:43) books like Neuromancer and then, you know, the original like Star Trek. You know, I think about that a lot. And there's something about Star Trek, which I think, you know, was like, it was this technology that was like very, very useful. Obviously, like, you know, you're able to just like talk to a computer and like a dusting spray. You're like, you can talk to your spaceship and it just moves, Speaker 1 (9:02) right? It's like, this is getting real, you know, like we're entering that era. So we're recording this in front of a live audience. There was this line out the door, just people waiting to see you, to hear from you. How do you just think about this? I don't know, role you're in, this responsibility you have to build what you're building and the impact it has on people's lives. I don't know, just what does that feel like? How do you think about that? Speaker 2 (9:21) I think it's