Today, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman shared a rare blog post on his website titled ‘The Intelligence Age.‘ In this captivating piece, he outlines his vision for an AI-powered future.
Altman emphasizes that “deep learning works” and possesses the ability to generalize across various domains and complex challenges derived from its training data. This capability enables humanity to tackle significant issues, such as “fixing the climate, establishing a space colony, and the discovery of all physics.”
Superintelligence_ AI That is Smarter Than Human
Sam Altman:
“That’s really it; humanity discovered an algorithm that could really, truly learn any distribution of data (or really, the underlying ‘rules’ that produce any distribution of data). To a shocking degree of precision, the more compute and data available, the better it gets at helping people solve hard problems. I find that no matter how much time I spend thinking about this, I can never really internalize how consequential it is.”
Similar to many participants and close observers in the AI industry discussing on X, Altman talks about AI that is “vastly smarter than humans”_superintelligence. According to these discussions, this advanced form of AI is expected to be achieved in “a few thousand days.”
“This may turn out to be the most consequential fact about all of history so far. It is possible that we will have superintelligence in a few thousand days (!); it may take longer, but I’m confident we’ll get there.”
With a thousand days translating to roughly 2.7 years, this timeline is significantly shorter than the five years most experts predict.
Many AI researchers, especially from OpenAI, have been watching the progress of superintelligence and its simpler form, artificial general intelligence (AGI). Former OpenAI chief scientist and co-founder Ilya Sutskever has even started a new company focused on making superintelligence safe.
Although, AI models are intelligent enough to take “IQ tests” but still they aren’t better than humans. However, generative AI stands out as it is smarter than the average human, serving as an assistant to complement human workers in completing tasks.
The Rise of Personal AI: Altman’s Vision for the Future
As the leader of OpenAI, a top AI company that recently launched its impressive model o1, Altman is optimistic about the future of AI assistants.
Sam Altman:
“There are a lot of details we still have to figure out, but it’s a mistake to get distracted by any particular challenge. Deep learning works, and we will solve the remaining problems. We can say a lot of things about what may happen next, but the main one is that AI is going to get better with scale, and that will lead to meaningful improvements to the lives of people around the world.”
Altman also stated that in the coming years, AI will be accessible to everyone, with each person having a personal AI team of virtual experts in various domains. Additionally, kids will have tutors for any subject.
The only significant challenge for the future will be limited resources, such as computer chips, as Altman stated. “AI will be a very limited resource that wars get fought over and that becomes mostly a tool for rich people.”
Altman Addresses Superintelligence Concerns with a Call for Risk Navigation:
“It will not be an entirely positive story, but the upside is so tremendous that we owe it to ourselves, and the future, to figure out how to navigate the risks in front of us.”
He talked about people who lose job losses due to AI, a recurring theme in his discussions. He believes that while labor will change for better or worse, there will always be tasks for people to do.
His wisdom, familiar to those following OpenAI’s growth, comes at a notable time as the company reportedly seeks to raise $6-$6.5 billion, valuing it at $150 billion. Interestingly, Altman chose to share his thoughts on his website instead of the official OpenAI platform, suggesting he views this more as his personal opinion than an official company stance.
