The ENTIRE History of ChatGPT in 12 Minutes — Transcript

Full transcript

1. 0:00Okay, quick question. When was the last
2. 0:02time you Googled something and then
3. 0:04thought, wait, I should just ask
4. 0:05ChatGPT. Yeah, me too. And that's kind
5. 0:09of insane because 3 years ago this thing
6. 0:11didn't even exist. Today we're going
7. 0:13through the entire history of ChatGPT.
8. 0:15The billionaires, the drama, the
9. 0:17boardroom coup, and the one product
10. 0:19launch that made the whole internet lose
11. 0:21its mind. Let's get into it.
12. 0:24Our story starts in December 2015.
13. 0:27Artificial intelligence is getting scary
14. 0:29good and a bunch of very rich, very
15. 0:31smart people are worried. Who's worried?
16. 0:33Sam Altman, who ran the startup
17. 0:35incubator Y Combinator, Elon Musk, a
18. 0:38researcher named Ilya Sutskever, Greg
19. 0:41Brockman, a payments guy. Their fear was
20. 0:43simple. What if one giant company, say
21. 0:46Google, builds super powerful AI first
22. 0:49and keeps it all to itself. So, they
23. 0:51said, let's build it in the open for the
24. 0:53benefit of humanity. They called it
25. 0:55[snorts] OpenAI. It was a non-profit and
26. 0:58they pledged a billion dollars. Now,
27. 1:01open and non-profit, remember those two
28. 1:04words because they're going to cause a
29. 1:05lot of problems later. For the first
30. 1:08couple of years, OpenAI was a research
31. 1:10lab doing weird experiments. They taught
32. 1:13AI to play video games and they taught a
33. 1:15robot hand to solve a Rubik's Cube. Cool
34. 1:18stuff, but nobody was exactly lining up
35. 1:20around the block. Then in 2017, a team
36. 1:23at Google published a research paper
37. 1:26with a very dramatic title, Attention is
38. 1:28all you need. Sounds like a breakup
39. 1:30song, right? But it introduced something
40. 1:32called the transformer. Without getting
41. 1:35too nerdy, a transformer is a way for AI
42. 1:37to look at a whole sentence at once and
43. 1:39figure out which words matter most to
44. 1:41each other. Before, AI read text kind of
45. 1:44like a person reading with a flashlight
46. 1:46in the dark, one word at a time.
47. 1:48Transformers turned the lights on.
48. 1:50Google published it for free. And the
49. 1:52people at OpenAI read it and went, oh,
50. 1:54we can do something with this. Google
51. 1:56basically handed over the blueprint to
52. 1:58its own future competitor.
53. 2:00Whoops. In 2018, OpenAI built GPT-1. GPT
54. 2:05stands for generative pre-trained
55. 2:07transformer. It was small, it was
56. 2:10clunky, and it could barely hold a
57. 2:11thought. But it proved the idea worked.
58. 2:14Feed a transformer a huge pile of text,
59. 2:17and it learns language. Then the bigger
60. 2:19is better era began. In 2019, came
61. 2:22GPT-2, and OpenAI did something
62. 2:25dramatic. They said the model was so
63. 2:27good at writing fake text that they were
64. 2:29scared to release it all at once. They
65. 2:32held it back and rolled it out in
66. 2:33stages. Some people said, "Wow,
67. 2:36responsible." Others said, "Bro, this is
68. 2:39a marketing stunt." Honestly, it was
69. 2:42probably both. That same year, the money
70. 2:44problem hit. Training these models costs
71. 2:46insane amounts of cash, and a nonprofit
72. 2:49just can't raise billions.
73. 2:51So OpenAI created a capped profit
74. 2:53company on top of the nonprofit, and
75. 2:56Microsoft invested $1 billion.
76. 2:59Meanwhile, Elon Musk had already left
77. 3:01the board in 2018.
78. 3:03He disagreed with the direction, and
79. 3:05later he'd become one of OpenAI's
80. 3:07loudest critics. We'll get back to him.
81. 3:10In 2020, GPT-3 dropped with 175 billion
82. 3:14parameters.
83. 3:15Parameters are basically the little
84. 3:17knobs the AI adjusts while learning.
85. 3:19GPT-2 had 1.5 billion, so this was more
86. 3:23than 100 times bigger.
87. 3:25And GPT-3 could write essays, poems,
88. 3:27even code. Developers got early access
89. 3:30and started posting jaw-dropping demos.
90. 3:33But here's the thing. Normal people
91. 3:35never saw it. You needed to be a
92. 3:37developer or sign up for a waitlist. It
93. 3:39was a Ferrari with no door handles. So
94. 3:42how do you take a wild rambling text
95. 3:44predictor and turn it into something
96. 3:45that actually listens to you? The answer
97. 3:48is a technique called RLHF,
98. 3:50reinforcement learning from human
99. 3:52feedback. Fancy name, simple idea.
100. 3:55Humans read the AI's answers and rank
101. 3:57them. This one's good. This one's trash.
102. 4:00This one's kind of rude. The AI learns
103. 4:02what people actually want. Think of it
104. 4:04like training a puppy, except the puppy
105. 4:06has read the entire internet. OpenAI
106. 4:08used that to build a model that followed
107. 4:10instructions way better.
108. 4:12And they wrapped it in the simplest
109. 4:13interface ever. No code, no wait list.
110. 4:16Just a text box. It's a random
111. 4:18Wednesday. OpenAI quietly tweets that
112. 4:21they've released something called
113. 4:22ChatGPT. They call it a research
114. 4:24preview. Internally, a lot of people
115. 4:27didn't expect it to be a big deal. It
116. 4:29was built on an upgraded GPT-3 model,
117. 4:31nothing groundbreaking.
118. 4:33And then the internet found it. People
119. 4:35asked it to write poems about their cat.
120. 4:37Explain quantum physics like they were
121. 4:39five. Write a breakup text. Do their
122. 4:41homework. Debug their code. Within five
123. 4:44days, it had a million users. For
124. 4:46comparison, Netflix took about 3 and 1/2
125. 4:49years to hit that number.
126. 4:50Instagram took a couple of months.
127. 4:52Within two months, it had an estimated
128. 4:54100 million users, which made it the
129. 4:56fastest-growing consumer app in history
130. 4:58at that point. TikTok, the app that ate
131. 5:01your entire attention span, needed
132. 5:03around nine months. Meanwhile, the
133. 5:05servers were melting.
134. 5:07Remember the ChatGPT is at capacity
135. 5:09right now message? That wasn't a bug,
136. 5:11that was a lifestyle. And honestly, it
137. 5:14wasn't perfect. It would confidently
138. 5:16make stuff up. People called these
139. 5:18hallucinations. It would say completely
140. 5:20false things with the confidence of a
141. 5:21guy at a party who totally read a book
142. 5:24once.
143. 5:25But nobody cared. It felt like magic.
144. 5:27Now, let's talk about who was freaking
145. 5:29out. Teachers, first of all. Students
146. 5:32were handing in essays written by AI,
147. 5:34and schools started banning it.
148. 5:36Meanwhile, students were like, "Sorry, I
149. 5:38don't make the rules." But the real
150. 5:40panic was at Google.
151. 5:41Their whole business is answering
152. 5:43questions. And now there's a chatbot
153. 5:45doing it better. Google reportedly
154. 5:47declared an internal code red. The
155. 5:49company that invented the transformer,
156. 5:52the thing that powered all of this, was
157. 5:54now playing catch-up. Remember
158. 5:55Microsoft, the guys who invested a
159. 5:57billion in 2019? In January 2023, they
160. 6:01put in a reported 10 billion more.
161. 6:03Then they stuck the tech into Bing. Yes,
162. 6:06Bing, the search engine nobody had
163. 6:08opened since 2011. For about a month,
164. 6:10Bing was relevant. Respect. Google
165. 6:13rushed out its own chatbot, Bard, and in
166. 6:15the very first demo it got a fact wrong.
167. 6:18The company's stock took a hit.
168. 6:20Oof.
169. 6:21Quick pause. If you're enjoying this,
170. 6:23subscribe to CEO Zone so you don't miss
171. 6:25the next company story.
172. 6:28In February 2023, OpenAI launched
173. 6:30ChatGPT Plus for $20 a month. Faster
174. 6:33responses, priority access. Free users
175. 6:36were annoyed. Everyone else paid anyway.
176. 6:39Then in March 2023 came GPT-4, which was
177. 6:42a big leap. It could pass the bar exam,
178. 6:45and it could understand images, too.
179. 6:47People showed it a photo of the inside
180. 6:49of their fridge and it suggested
181. 6:51recipes. Okay, that one's actually
182. 6:53useful.
183. 6:54Also around that time, Italy briefly
184. 6:56banned ChatGPT over privacy concerns,
185. 6:59becoming the first Western country to do
186. 7:01it.
187. 7:02Pasta, yes. Chatbot, no. It was back
188. 7:05after OpenAI made some changes.
189. 7:07Companies started panicking about leaks,
190. 7:08too. Some employees at big firms had
191. 7:11pasted confidential code into ChatGPT.
192. 7:14Whoops. Several companies banned it at
193. 7:16work, then quietly built their own
194. 7:17versions. And suddenly everybody was in
195. 7:19the AI race.
196. 7:21Anthropic, which was started by former
197. 7:23OpenAI people, Google's Gemini, Meta's
198. 7:26open models, and a hundred startups. The
199. 7:28gold rush was on, and Nvidia, the
200. 7:31company selling the shovels, became one
201. 7:33of the most valuable companies on Earth.
202. 7:35Now we get to the best part, the soap
203. 7:37opera.
204. 7:38November 17th, 2023. Sam Altman is, you
205. 7:41know, the face of AI. He's meeting world
206. 7:44leaders. He's on magazine covers. And on
207. 7:46a Friday afternoon, he gets a call. The
208. 7:49OpenAI board has fired him. The reason?
209. 7:52The board said he hadn't been
210. 7:53consistently candid in his
211. 7:55communications. That's it.
212. 7:57That's the whole explanation. Corporate
213. 7:59speak for, "We're not telling you." The
214. 8:02internet exploded. Chief scientist Ilya
215. 8:04Sutskever was part of the move. Greg
216. 8:07Brockman quit in solidarity. Investors
217. 8:09were furious. Microsoft, which had put
218. 8:12billions into the company, was
219. 8:13blindsided. Over the weekend, it got
220. 8:16absurd. The board hired an interim CEO,
221. 8:19then another one. Then nearly all the
222. 8:21employees signed a letter saying, "Bring
223. 8:23Sam back or we're all leaving to
224. 8:24Microsoft." Over 700 out of about 770
225. 8:28people. Even Ilya flipped and said he
226. 8:30regretted it.
227. 8:31Five days later, Altman was back as CEO
228. 8:34with a new board. Five days. A thriller
229. 8:37written by a committee. To this day,
230. 8:39people debate what really happened.
231. 8:41Safety fears? Power struggle? Bad
232. 8:44communication? Nobody has given a fully
233. 8:46satisfying answer. After that, things
234. 8:49accelerated. OpenAI added voice
235. 8:52conversations, image generation, and
236. 8:54custom GPTs.
237. 8:56In 2024, came GPT-4o,
238. 8:59which could talk to you in real time
239. 9:01with an eerily human voice. And that
240. 9:03voice caused drama. One of the voices,
241. 9:06Sky, sounded a lot like Scarlett
242. 9:08Johansson, who'd actually turned down
243. 9:10OpenAI's offer to voice the assistant.
244. 9:13She was not happy, and OpenAI pulled the
245. 9:15voice. Never ask a movie star's
246. 9:17permission after you've already used her
247. 9:19vibe. Around then, a bunch of top safety
248. 9:22people left, including Ilya himself.
249. 9:25Critics said OpenAI was moving too fast
250. 9:27and caring too little. OpenAI said it
251. 9:29was doing both.
252. 9:31Like a driver saying, "I'm speeding, but
253. 9:33safely."
254. 9:34Then came the reasoning models, starting
255. 9:37with O1, which think before they answer.
256. 9:40Instead of blurting out a response, they
257. 9:42work through the problem step-by-step.
258. 9:44Math, coding, science, all suddenly
259. 9:47better. And in early 2025, a Chinese
260. 9:50company called Deep Seek shocked
261. 9:52everyone by releasing a strong model
262. 9:54that was apparently much cheaper to
263. 9:55train.
264. 9:56Markets freaked out for a day, then
265. 9:58everyone went back to scrolling.
266. 10:00Then in spring 2025, ChatGPT's image
267. 10:03generator went viral. When everybody
268. 10:05turned their photos into Studio
269. 10:07Ghibli-style art,
270. 10:08for a week, every profile picture on the
271. 10:11internet looked like a cozy anime movie.
272. 10:13The servers were melting again.
273. 10:15Sam Altman joked that the GPUs were
274. 10:17melting.
275. 10:18By 2025, OpenAI was valued at hundreds
276. 10:21of billions of dollars. ChatGPT had
277. 10:24hundreds of millions of people using it
278. 10:25every week. GPT-5 launched. And the
279. 10:29company had been working on
280. 10:30restructuring itself, so it could raise
281. 10:32even more cash, which, remember, goes
282. 10:34back original nonprofit promise.
283. 10:37Which brings us back to Elon Musk. He
284. 10:39sued OpenAI, saying it had betrayed its
285. 10:41original mission.
286. 10:43OpenAI fired back, saying he'd wanted to
287. 10:45control it. The drama continues, and
288. 10:48honestly, it's not looking like it ends
289. 10:49anytime soon. So, where are we now?
290. 10:53ChatGPT went from a quiet research
291. 10:55preview to a tool that students,
292. 10:57programmers, and CEOs use every day.
293. 11:00It writes emails, it plans trips, it
294. 11:03answers life advice at 3:00 a.m. It's
295. 11:06probably been your therapist at some
296. 11:07point, and no, I won't tell.
297. 11:10But big questions are still open. What
298. 11:12happens to jobs? Who's responsible when
299. 11:14AI is wrong? And if one company ends up
300. 11:17with the most powerful AI on the planet,
301. 11:19isn't that exactly what the founders
302. 11:21said they wanted to prevent back in
303. 11:232015? That's the irony. The company that
304. 11:26started as the answer to what if one
305. 11:28company controls AI is now one of the
306. 11:31biggest companies in AI. So, that's the
307. 11:33story. A non-profit lab, a Google
308. 11:36research paper, a quiet Wednesday
309. 11:38launch, a 5-day boardroom coup, and a
310. 11:41chatbot that changed how the whole world
311. 11:43works. From a billion-dollar pledge in
312. 11:452015 to 100 million users in 2 months.
313. 11:48Not bad for a text box. Now, I want to
314. 11:50hear from you. What do you actually use
315. 11:52ChatGPT for? Homework? Code? Therapy? Be
316. 11:56honest. Drop it in the comments. And if
317. 11:58you want to know which company we're
318. 11:59breaking down next, you know where to
319. 12:01find us. See you in the next one.