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OpenAI cofounder Greg Brockman on the importance of the “initial conditions” of a technology

May 21, 2024

“I think one question you need to ask as a scientist, as an inventor or as a creator, is what impact can you have in general, right? You look at things like the telephone invented by two people on the same day. What does that mean about the shape of innovation? And I think that what's going on is everyone's building on the shoulders of the same giants. And so you can't really hope to create something no one else ever would.”

If Einstein wasn’t born, it’s likely someone else would’ve discovered relativity. As Greg argues:

“He changed the timeline a bit, right? Maybe it would have taken another 20 years, but it wouldn't be that fundamentally humanity would never discover these fundamental truths.”

Think about Moore’s law:

“An entire industry set its clock to it for 50 years. Like, how can that be right? How is that possible? And yet somehow it happened.”

If you can’t hope to invent something no on one else will, Greg believes one of the most impactful things scientists, inventors, and creators can do is set the “initial conditions” for a new technology:

“If you really want to make a difference, I think the thing that you really have to do is to set the initial conditions under which a technology is born.”

He gives the Internet as an example:

“There were lots of other competitors trying to build similar things and the Internet won. The initial conditions were that it was created by this group that really valued this very academic mindset of being open and connected… I think that those initial conditions were really important to determine the next 40 years worth of progress.”