OpenAI will point its robotics programme at building data centres, chief executive Sam Altman said. Self-replicating data centres, built with AI-controlled robots, are “within grasp”, he said. He spoke to Stripe co-founder John Collison on Collison’s podcast, Cheeky Pint, released on Thursday.

The episode is on YouTube , and Cheeky Pint published a full transcript on Substack. Altman also talked about AI finding software flaws, and about the limits of sandboxes for models far smarter than people.

Robots, chips and data centres

Asked how the compute shortage is going, Altman said demand for capable models at a low price “only goes one way”. OpenAI has made its own chip , which he said performs well on intelligence per watt. It is also learning to build its own data centres , he said.

“People talk a lot about RSI as an AI that does AI research.…