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Open AI's Fidji Simo says AI investment frenzy 'new normal,' not bubble San Francisco, United States, Oct 7 (AFP) Oct 07, 2025 The dizzying investments in artificial intelligence infrastructure do not constitute a bubble but rather represent today's "new normal" to meet skyrocketing user demand, Fidji Simo, OpenAI's de facto number two, said on Monday. The French-born executive made her comments in an interview with AFP, her first since taking up her role as Chief Operating Officer of OpenAI's applications, including its flagship model ChatGPT. In the past few weeks, her company, under the leadership of CEO Sam Altman, has made a series of huge investments in data centers and AI chips, despite no real signs that the fast-emerging AI business is close to breaking even. The answers were lightly edited for length and clarity.
From that perspective, I really do not see that as a bubble. I see that as a new normal, and I think the world is going to switch to realizing that computing power is the most strategic resource.
Take mental health, for example. I'm hearing tons of users say that they go to ChatGPT for advice in tough moments where they may not have other people to talk to. Many people can't afford to go to a therapist. I talk to a lot of parents who are telling me: God, I got this really awesome advice that helped me unlock a situation with my child. But at the same time, we need to make sure that the model behaves as expected. On mental health, we have announced a very robust roadmap. We started with parental controls. We have plans to launch age prediction: if we can predict that the user is a teenager, we give them a model that is less permissive than we would give to an adult. Jobs are also very much on my mind, and it's a similar approach. AI is going to create a lot of jobs, like prompt engineering, that absolutely did not exist before. At the same time, there are some professions that are going to be directly impacted, and we see our role as helping with the transition.
Not just give you a good answer to a question, not just have a dialog, but actually tell you, 'Oh, okay, you're telling me that you want to spend more time with your wife. Well, there might be some weekend getaways that would be helpful, and I know it's a lot to plan, so I've already done all the planning for you and I've already made some reservations. Just tap one button to approve and everything gets done.' We're still very early, but we're on that journey to capture that. - In San Francisco, you sometimes hear: 'America innovates, China copies, Europe regulates' -
On China, we continue to be extremely focused on continuing to have a lead, because we see China continuing to invest heavily in being competitive -- whether in terms of innovation or in terms of computing -- and so we think it's incredibly important to continue investing across a democratic bloc to advance AI that has these [democratic] values.
It's magical to see what she's able to create. Just this weekend, she was telling me about creating a new business. She was using ChatGPT to make banners for the new business, to create taglines. In our childhood, we couldn't turn our imagination into something real that fast. And I see that really giving her superpowers, where she thinks anything is possible. |
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