John Curtis Asks OpenAI CEO Sam Altman How Small Businesses Can Benefit From Using ChatGPT

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During a Senate Commerce Committee hearing last week, Sen. John Curtis (R-UT) asked OpenAI CEO Sam Altman about the benefits that ChatGPT can provide for small businesses.

Transcript

00:00Senator Curtis. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It's a delight to be here. Mr. Altman,

00:05you started kind of a one-upmanship on computers, and I will just

00:10tell you, in 1985, the month you were born, I was attending a class at Brigham

00:15Young University and carried in a laptop and was almost kicked out. What laptop?

00:20It was a TRS-80, made by Radio Shack. I upgraded the memory from 40k to 80k, ran

00:27on four AA batteries, and yeah, so I'm very envious of your generation. Let me

00:35start with you, if I would. I think, you know, Utah would aspire to lead out with

00:39data centers and advanced technologies. Could you just address for states, and

00:45Utah specifically, what it is that makes them attractive to projects like

00:50Stargate? Yeah, and I know that we're having productive discussions about some

00:55potential sites in Utah. Power, cooling, fast permitting process, labor force that

01:02can build these things, the electricians, the construction workers, the entire stack,

01:05a state that wants to partner with us to move quickly. Texas really has been

01:10unbelievable on this. I think that would be a good thing for other states to study,

01:14but we'd be excited to try to fix something out. Thank you. I think I can

01:18speak for our state leaders. We would be excited as well, but as you know, this also

01:23brings challenges, and one of those challenges, the demands for energy, and

01:27what's your thoughts on how we protect ratepayers, and kind of put a little bit

01:33of a firewall between them? I mean, I think the best way is just much more

01:37supply, more generation. You know, like, I think if you make it easy to reasonably,

01:45profitably create a lot of additional generative capacity, the market will do that.

01:51That will not only not drive up rates because of the AI workload, hopefully it'll

01:55drive it down for everything. And we've talked a lot about the importance of energy

01:59to AI. Energy is just really important to quality of life. One of the things that

02:03seems to me the most consistent throughout history is every time the cost of energy

02:08falls, the quality of life goes up. And so doing a lot to make energy cheaper. In the

02:14short term, I think this probably looks like more natural gas, although there are some

02:19applications where I think solar can really help. In the medium term, I hope

02:22it's advanced nuclear fission and fusion. More energy is important well beyond AI.

02:28You know, in some sense, we have these dual revolutions going of AI and energy that the

02:33ability to have new ideas, and the ability to get them done to make them happen in the

02:37physical world where we all live. Like, these are kind of the limiting reagents of

02:41prosperity and let's have a lot more. Thank you. Mr. Smith, we've talked about how significant

02:49power was, is to the success here. What role do you think Microsoft and other tech leaders

02:55have in developing energy and particularly the right type of energy?

03:00I think we have a tremendous responsibility to contribute to the solution and I think Sam

03:06helped with his list. I would highlight two things and I just would, I guess, illustrate

03:12it with what we do everywhere, but most recently with a major site in southeastern Wisconsin.

03:18We went from zero, basically, to becoming the largest industrial user of electricity in the

03:24state, roughly 400 megawatts. And so we worked with the local utility. We made the investment

03:31to help and really enable them to expand their electricity generation. Now, that electricity

03:39then needed to be delivered from their power plant through the grid to our data center.

03:46We went to the Public Utilities Commission and we proposed a rate increase on ourselves because

03:53we thought it was important that we pay for that improvement to the grid so that the neighbors,

03:58so to speak, would not have to. And I think what it really illustrates is the collaborative

04:04partnerships that are needed to provide the capital, to do the construction, to improve

04:10the grid, and to be, I think, very sensitive to the community as a whole.

04:16Thank you. Mr. Altman, let me come back to you. I was a small business owner. I have a special

04:20spot in my heart for small business owners. Can we talk a little bit about ChatGPT and how that

04:26might assist small business owners? And let me paint a little broader picture. We've heard

04:31a lot about other tools that are perhaps out of favor, particularly with the U.S. government,

04:37that are very helpful for small businesses. But I don't know if small businesses are fully

04:42understanding the platform that you have and how they might use it for marketing, for data

04:47research, and ways to help their small business be successful.

04:50One of, there were all these moments as ChatGPT was beginning to take off where we would be like,

04:55oh, we may have like a hit on our hands. There's like, that's, someone's using it for this and this,

04:59and that's, you know, strangers talking about it. You see someone using it in a coffee shop.

05:02But one of the ones that really sticks out for me is pretty quickly after ChatGPT launched,

05:08like in the first six months, say, I was in an Uber and the driver was making conversation.

05:15He's like, have you heard of this thing called ChatGPT? It's amazing. And I was like, yeah.

05:18Well, like, what do you think about it? And he was using it to run basically his entire small business.

05:25He was like, I had, he ran a laundromat. He's like, I had all these problems, you know,

05:28like couldn't find good people to write my ads, couldn't get like legal documents reviewed,

05:32couldn't like answer customer support emails. And he was like a mega early adopter, but he was one of these people

05:37that was using AI to like make a small business work. And that was, we talked about that story a lot at the time.

05:42But I was, it's nice to reflect on it again. Now we've now heard that at scale from a lot of people,

05:47but that was one of those moments early on where like, oh, this is maybe going to work.

05:51So, and I'm out of time, but just to mark, this is more than just something that helps proofread emails.

05:56Right. And you don't need to comment because I'm out of time, but we'll, I think we would all agree with that.

06:01It is. And look forward to seeing these applications move forward.

06:03Mr. Chairman, I yield my time.

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