At Thursday's Senate Commerce Committee hearing, Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) questioned OpenAI CEO Sam Altman about the Singularity.
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00:00Thank you Mr. Chairman. Hi, hello. Mr. Smith, I'm a big supporter of energy. For me, energy security is national security. And of course, you know, renewables about that. But of course other things as well too, fossil. But also, that also includes nuclear. Of course, nuclear is important.
00:23And now then there's that kind of energy transition. My focus is also that I want to make sure that rate payers in Pennsylvania really aren't hit too hard throughout all of this. Now, the Washington Post reported that increasing electricity demand for the data centers is going to raise up residential power bills, perhaps as much by 20%. Now, that's really a concern for me and certainly for Pennsylvania families.
00:49Now, the data center, you know, has important jobs during construction and doing those things. And that's a great thing, of course. But they're not, I guess, long term. But the rate, those rates might last longer for that.
01:06And now I've been tracking the plan to reopen TMI. I mean, I had, my own personal story is I had to grab my hamster and evacuate, you know, during the meltdown in 1979.
01:18You might consume, you might assume that I was anti-nuclear and that is not, it's like, I actually am very supportive of nuclear because that's an important part of the stack.
01:27If you really want to have an address climate change, you can't turn your back on nuclear, in my opinion. But I know that's the power Microsoft's data center. So now, and I really appreciate that.
01:41But if I'm saying now, if we're able to commit that the power purchase agreement, you know, it's not going to raise electricity for Pennsylvania families.
01:49No, I think you raise a critical point. We have two principles that we follow when we're constructing these data centers. Number one, we will invest to bring onto the grid in an amount of electricity that equals the amount of electricity that we will use so that we're not tapping a constricted supply.
02:11Number two, we will manage all of this in a way that ensures that our activity does not raise the price of electricity to the community.
02:21And so I was describing earlier how if there's improvements that need to be made to the grid, as there often are, we'll go to the utility commission.
02:31We will propose a change in the rate that we are charged so that we can pay for that improvement.
02:36I just think it's a fact of life, because I think you highlight something critical.
02:42There's a lot of jobs when the construction takes place. There are jobs afterwards, but they are not as many.
02:49One will wear out the welcome quickly if we tax, in effect, the neighborhood by asking everyone to pay more for their electricity because we have arrived.
03:00We get it. We know we have to be a good and responsible member of the neighborhood.
03:06One of the perks of being a senator is that for me, anyway, I get an opportunity to meet people that have much more impressive kinds of jobs or careers that I've led.
03:21Mr. Altman, I'm going to count this as a highlight recently.
03:26I know the work that you've done. You're really one of the people that are moving AI, and now it's an opportunity.
03:34I was excited to meet you.
03:36And now people ask me if you're going to talk about AI, and now I get to ask you, the literal, the expert.
03:46Some people are worried about AI or whatever, and I'm like, what about the singularity?
03:50So, you know, the people like that, if you would address that, please.
03:54Thank you, Senator, for the kind words and for normalizing hoodies in more spaces.
03:58I'd love to see that.
04:00I am incredibly excited about the rate of progress, but I also am cautious, and I would say, like, I don't know.
04:15I feel small next to it or something. I think this is beyond something that we all fully yet understand where it's going to go.
04:22This is, I believe, among the biggest, maybe it'll turn out to be the biggest technological revolutions humanity will have ever produced.
04:30And I feel privileged to be here.
04:35I feel curious and interested in what's going to happen.
04:39But I do think things are going to change quite substantially.
04:42I think humans have a wonderful ability to adapt, and things that seem amazing will become the new normal very quickly.
04:51We'll figure out how to use these tools to just do things we could never do before.
04:55And I think it will be quite extraordinary.
04:57But these are going to be tools that are capable of things that we can't quite wrap our heads around.
05:03And some people call that, you know, as these tools start helping us to create next and future iterations, some people call that singularity, some people call that the takeoff.
05:12Whatever it is, it feels like a sort of new era of human history.
05:16And I think it's tremendously exciting that we get to live through that, and we can make it a wonderful thing.
05:21But we've got to approach it with humility and some caution.
05:25I mean, I just did, for me, it's been, I get a chance to ask questions to a lot of Edisons, you know, as well, too.
05:38Like, the kinds of things that you're all collectively involved are going to transform our society, and people will look back 50, 60 years ago and see what's happened.
05:46So, to me, over to the chairman.