Altman said that they had scaling laws indicating that the technology gets predictably better as compute, memory and data increase, and that they used those predictions to decide how to scale it up.
Resolved true The record shows it happened or was so.
Factual: Statements about the present or the past, checked against the record: did they hold up?
Said for an organisation they lead or work for; it counts on both records.
What would count as true or false
The test is what Altman said in his remarks on or around 2025-08-09. It has two parts: (a) that they had scaling laws showing the technology improves predictably as compute, data and similar inputs increase, and (b) that they used those predictions to decide how to scale up. True: a transcript shows him saying both parts, explicitly or clearly in context. Mostly true: part (a) is stated as quoted, and part (b) is only implied by the surrounding remarks, or minor wording differs. Mixed: only part (a) is in the transcript, and nothing in context supports part (b). Mostly false: the words appear, but in context they say something materially different, for example that scaling laws were not relied on. False: the transcript shows he did not make the statement.
Set before the research began.
Evidence (2)
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E1 Sam Altman Shows Me GPT 5... And What's Next — Full Transcript scribehawk.com · 7 June 2026
“But we had these things called scaling laws. And we said, Okay, so this gets predictably better as we increase compute memory data, whatever. And we can, we can decide, we can use those predictions to make decisions about how to scale this up and do it and get great results.”
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E2 Sam Altman Shows Me GPT 5... And What's Next | YouTube Summarizer | hmtuvNfytjM Transcript infocaptor.com · 1 January 2026
“we said, "Okay, so this gets predictably better as we increase compute, memory, data, whatever. And we can we can decide we can use those predictions to make decisions about how to scale this up and do it and get great results.”
Reasoning
Two independent transcripts of the interview "Sam Altman Shows Me GPT 5... And What's Next" (E1, E2) record Altman saying they had scaling laws showing the technology "gets predictably better as we increase compute memory data, whatever." In the same passage he goes on to say "we can use those predictions to make decisions about how to scale this up and do it and get great results." That covers both part (a) and part (b) of the criteria explicitly.
Cite this claim
Sam Altman, “Altman said that they had scaling laws indicating that the technology gets predictably better as compute, memory and data increase, and that they used those predictions to decide how to scale it up.” (said 9 August 2025). Verdict: resolved true. Reliability API, claim c_d71a86c36789, method 0.1.0+c876030c, dataset release v1.1.2. https://epistacklabs.com/claims/c_d71a86c36789
This claim is in dataset release v1.1.2, with the same verdict.
Reply to this claim
More factual claims by Sam Altman
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Mostly true
“not until 2020 did we train GPT-3, which was the first model that I think actually was over some threshold of usability.”
OpenAI trained GPT-3 in 2020, which Altman considers the first model above a threshold of usability.
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Resolved true
“that it is so capable that it is discovering new knowledge, doing science, able to add huge economic value, create entire pieces of complex software.”
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Mixed
“They now hallucinate a little bit.”
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Mixed
“They don’t do anything unless you ask, right?”
AI models such as ChatGPT do not do anything unless a user asks them to.
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Mostly true
“But in terms of figuring out what questions to ask or to work on something over a very long period of time, we are definitely not close to human performance.”
Verdicts are made automatically; how verdicts are made.