{"id":819579,"date":"2026-10-31T08:54:11","date_gmt":"2026-10-31T08:54:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/819579\/"},"modified":"2026-10-31T08:54:11","modified_gmt":"2026-10-31T08:54:11","slug":"sam-altman-reveals-internal-model-name-was-hold-my-beer-pours-one-out-for-all-the-lives-ai-could-destroy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/819579\/","title":{"rendered":"Sam Altman Reveals Internal Model Name Was ‘Hold My Beer,’ Pours One Out for All the Lives AI Could Destroy"},"content":{"rendered":"

Even Sam \u201cmagic intelligence in the sky\u201d<\/a> Altman, the chief executive of OpenAI and the poster child of the AI boom, has mixed feelings about the speed at which the technology is developing.<\/p>\n

In an appearance earlier this week on Stripe cofounder John Collison\u2019s podcast, called Cheeky Pint, Altman reclined in a pub booth, sipped IPA and Guinness, and eulogized the many experts whose careers are actively being upended by the rise of AI.<\/p>\n

That sting has been felt especially keenly<\/a> in recent weeks by mathematicians, after OpenAI controversially published<\/a> its AI-assisted solution to the Navier-Stokes problem, which had vexed the field for decades. Some mathematicians called foul, accusing the company of what amounted in their view to plagiarism. Then, earlier this month, OpenAI followed up by publishing results<\/a> for nearly 400 additional long-standing math problems.<\/p>\n

In much the same way that professional chess players look back on Deep Blue\u2019s victory over Kasparov, future generations of mathematicians will probably look back at OpenAI\u2019s string of proofs in late 2026 as the watershed moment when their field was irrevocably altered by AI.<\/p>\n

Adding insult to injury, Altman let slip on his Cheeky Pint appearance\u2014\u201cI\u2019m actually probably not supposed to say this, but I will since we\u2019re drinking\u201d\u2014that one of the models OpenAI had been using internally to solve some especially difficult technical problems was known among employees as: \u201cModel Name-Hold My Beer.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had this collective experience of people\u2019s hardest research problems from their academic career; the model was just knocking them down, one after the other,\u201d Altman said. \u201cMany different fields\u2014it was incredible to watch.\u201d (He added that among them were \u201cmany of those problems that we published,\u201d which could refer to the hundreds of math solutions OpenAI posted earlier this month. OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for clarification.)<\/p>\n

Watching Model Name-Hold My Beer was also apparently a tad bit unnerving. \u201cTwo nights in a row I was up most of the night because I was just so excited I couldn\u2019t go to bed,\u201d Altman said. \u201cI was tremendously excited and happy, but I also had much more sadness and melancholy and a feeling of something ending than I was expecting.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

What follows is a disconcerting bit of back and forth in which Altman seemingly tries to express the basic human expression of empathy for the lives that are going to be permanently altered by AI, while his interlocutor reassures him that this is just the way of things and he need not trouble his conscience.<\/p>\n

Altman: \u201cI agree this is the right thing on behalf of the world, and also I agree that this is just the shape of reality and nothing that anyone can stop, or should stop. But I do have real\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n

Collison: \u201cIt\u2019s a wistfulness and nostalgia you can feel.\u201d<\/p>\n

Altman: \u201cIt\u2019s more than nostalgia.\u201d<\/p>\n

Collison: \u201cWistfulness.\u201d<\/p>\n

Altman: \u201cYeah.\u201d<\/p>\n

Here we can witness an echo chamber being perpetuated before our eyes: two individuals confirming a shared belief in the idea that the spread of AI, and all its consequent upheavals, is an unavoidable next stage in technological\u2014and indeed human<\/a>\u2014evolution. At the end of the day, it doesn\u2019t matter how many lives, communities, or ecosystems are being disrupted in the present if you earnestly believe that what you\u2019re building will make life better for everyone in the future. And this, above all else, is the ideology pushing the AI juggernaut forward.<\/p>\n

In another moment of reflection earlier on in the conversation, Altman mused: \u201cI don\u2019t think we\u201d\u2014meaning OpenAI\u2014\u201chave done a great job of explaining to people why we think all of the potential downsides of this technology is worth it.\u201d He may actually be onto something there. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Even Sam \u201cmagic intelligence in the sky\u201d Altman, the chief executive of OpenAI and the poster child of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":819580,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[554,733,4308,43046,268901,874,10108,86,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-819579","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-mathematics","tag-navier-stokes-problem","tag-openai","tag-sam-altman","tag-technology","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/819579","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=819579"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/819579\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/819580"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=819579"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=819579"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=819579"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}