Open AI CEO says AI ‘superintelligence’ is coming sooner than you think

Open AI CEO Sam Altman says the world could be just “a few thousand days” from creating an artificial “superintelligence.”

Altman made the assertion in a personal blog post on Monday, declaring that the world is now at the “dawn of the Intelligence Age.”

“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,” Altman wrote.

Current AIs, such as ChatGPT, are large language models that analyze troves of data to provide responses and reactions. A “superintelligent” AI, however, would have greater cognitive abilities than any human, as well as the ability to iterate on and improve itself. 

Altman argues it is critical to continue investing in more chips and computing power to establish a widespread infrastructure for such technology.

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“If we want to put AI into the hands of as many people as possible, we need to drive down the cost of compute and make it abundant (which requires lots of energy and chips). If we don’t build enough infrastructure, AI will be a very limited resource that wars get fought over and that becomes mostly a tool for rich people,” he said.

“We need to act wisely but with conviction. The dawn of the Intelligence Age is a momentous development with very complex and extremely high-stakes challenges. 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 continued.

Altman’s statement comes as a new tech startup co-founded by OpenAI’s former chief scientist Ilya Sutskever announced it has raised $1 billion in cash to help fund the development of a safe artificial intelligence system.

Sutskever co-founded the company, Safe Superintelligence (SSI), with fellow OpenAI veteran Daniel Levy and former Apple AI chief Daniel Gross.

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“We’ve started the world’s first straight-shot SSI lab, with one goal and one product: a safe superintelligence,” the company wrote on social media in June.

The company said it plans to achieve its goal through “revolutionary engineering and scientific breakthroughs” without the distraction of “management overhead or product cycles.”

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Investors include venture capitalist firms including Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia Capital and SV Angel.

Gross told Reuters that it was important to find investors who align with their goal of creating a safe superintelligence.

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“It’s important for us to be surrounded by investors who understand, respect and support our mission, which is to make a straight shot to safe superintelligence and in particular to spend a couple of years doing R&D on our product before bringing it to market,” Gross said told the outlet.

Fox News’ Stephen Sorace contributed to this report