OpenAI CEO Sam Altman wrote a rare note about his website Today he explains his vision of an AI-powered future, or as he calls it (and his blog post is titled): “The age of intelligence.“
Specifically, Altman argues that “deep learning works” and could be generalized to a spread of domains and difficult problems based on its training data, allowing humans to “solve difficult problems” including “improving the climate, starting an area colony, and discovering all of physics.” As he puts it:
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In a provocative statement that many AI industry participants and attentive observers have already picked up in discussions about X, Altman also said that superintelligence – AI that “way more intelligent than humans,“ – could possibly be achieved in “a couple of thousand days”, in response to previous statements by OpenAI.
A thousand days is roughly 2.7 years, a much shorter time period than the five years given by most experts.
Many AI researchers, especially those at OpenAI, have been working on superintelligence, and a lower version is generally called artificial general intelligence (AGI). The recent startup of former OpenAI chief scientist and co-founder Ilya Sutskever even focuses on secure superintelligence.
AI models now perform well on “IQ tests” or knowledge benchmark tests, but they should not yet higher than humans. To date, most use cases of generative AI haven’t been about computer programs which are far more intelligent than the common human, but fairly about assistants that complement human staff in completing tasks.
AI experts for everybody
However, Altman believes that this use case of AI assistants and agents might be widespread in a couple of years.
He added that AI will soon enable everyone to attain many things as every one can have a private AI team with virtual experts in lots of fields and youngsters can have personal tutors for each subject.
That Altman is an AI maximalist isn’t any surprise, as he runs considered one of the leading AI firms. OpenAI recently released its strongest AI model thus far, o1, which might reason without an excessive amount of human guidance.
Altman points out that there are several obstacles to a world of widespread AI use, corresponding to the necessity to make computers cheaper and the supply of contemporary chips. He even suggests that without constructing out the infrastructure to support AI development, “AI might be a really limited resource, over which wars might be fought and can grow to be primarily a tool for wealthy people.”
Not entirely positive
Altman, nonetheless, shouldn’t be quite as obsessed with the potential of AI. He points out that there may even be disadvantages, and explains:
Altman mentions that folks are losing their jobs because of AI, something he has said beforea fleeting nod to considered one of the best fears those outside the tech world bubble.
Altman believes that work under artificial intelligence will change for each higher and worse, but humans won’t ever run out of things to do.
Altman's manifesto comes as no surprise to anyone who has followed the expansion of OpenAI and generative AI over the past few years. However, the timing of his musings has led some to imagine this might all be a option to secure OpenAI's next round of funding. The company reportedly increased 6 to six.5 billion US dollars, which corresponds to a worth of 150 billion US dollars.
However, it’s interesting to see that Altman selected to post the news on his personal website fairly than the official OpenAI company website, suggesting that he considers this to be his own opinion fairly than the official company line.
