Studying a weblog put up from OpenAI CEO Sam Altman on this specific Monday in February makes excellent sense, contemplating what’s taking place on this planet proper now. The AI Motion Summit in Paris has world leaders and tech execs in attendence, discussing AI’s future and potential regulation wanted to safeguard the area.
Sam Altman penned a weblog put up titled Three Observations, sharing a mission assertion for the way forward for ChatGPT and different OpenAI know-how, with a transparent give attention to AGI (Synthetic Basic Intelligence). The CEO offers us his extremely optimistic view of what AGI and AI brokers will imply for the world within the close to and extra distant future and what life could be like as soon as AGI and AI brokers steal your jobs.
The mission assertion got here on the finish of an extremely essential interval for OpenAI, and it was all of the extra essential contemplating the headwinds OpenAI needed to face.
Up to now few weeks, the corporate launched the primary AI brokers (Operator and Deep Analysis) and made out there two ChatGPT o3 fashions, all a part of an enormous money-raising marketing campaign that proved profitable. That’s regardless of the continuing custom of ChatGPT security researchers leaving the corporate or the sudden competitors from Chinese language rival DeepSeek.
I questioned what OpenAI’s major creation would take into consideration the weblog, so I went to ChatGPT (GPT-4o) to ask the AI the way it felt in regards to the weblog put up. As anticipated, the AI acknowledged the mission assertion is about applied sciences just like itself, with out having any emotions about it. ChatGPT additionally highlighted concenrs with Altman’s line of rigorously edited pondering.
Altman’s view of the post-AGI world
Altman began the weblog by explaining AGI after making it clear that OpenAI’s mission is to make sure that AGI advantages humanity. As you’re about to see, the exec didn’t provide a superbly goal clarification for AGI or what AGI means from the Microsoft-OpenAI enterprise relationship:
Programs that begin to level to AGI* are coming into view, and so we predict it’s essential to grasp the second we’re in. AGI is a weakly outlined time period, however usually talking we imply it to be a system that may sort out more and more advanced issues, at human degree, in lots of fields.
Altman then defined the speedy progress in AI improvement, indicating that the price of an AI product tends to fall by ten instances each 12 months, resulting in elevated utilization. GPT-4 costs from early 2023 dropped by about 150 instances by the point ChatGPT reached the GPT-4o mannequin in mid-2024.
The CEO additionally made it clear that OpenAI received’t cease investing in AI {hardware} within the close to future, which is probably going a wanted comment in a post-DeepSeek world. Just a few weeks in the past, the Chinese language AI surprised the world with its ChatGPT-like skills obtained at a lot decrease prices.
All these AI developments will result in the following part of AI evolution, together with AI brokers, in the direction of the age of AGI. That’s the place Altman gave an instance of AI agent working as a software program engineer:
Let’s think about the case of a software program engineering agent, which is an agent that we anticipate to be significantly essential. Think about that this agent will ultimately be able to doing most issues a software program engineer at a high firm with a couple of years of expertise might do, for duties as much as a few days lengthy. It won’t have the most important new concepts, it is going to require a lot of human supervision and path, and will probably be nice at some issues however surprisingly dangerous at others.
Altman didn’t say this engineer would take the job of a human, however he might need simply as nicely stated it. Think about thousands and thousands of AI brokers taking on jobs in numerous fields:
Nonetheless, think about it as a real-but-relatively-junior digital coworker. Now think about 1,000 of them. Or 1 million of them. Now think about such brokers in each subject of data work.
Sure, that’s a nightmare situation to some individuals, and it’s simple to grasp why, regardless that Altman paints an total rosy image of what’s coming forward and downplaying the dangerous unintended effects. Altman stated the world received’t change instantly this 12 months, however AI and AGI will change within the extra distant future. We’ll inevitably must be taught new methods of constructing ourselves helpful (learn: work) as soon as AI takes over:
The world won’t change abruptly; it by no means does. Life will go on principally the identical within the quick run, and folks in 2025 will principally spend their time in the identical method they did in 2024. We’ll nonetheless fall in love, create households, get in fights on-line, hike in nature, and so on.
However the future shall be coming at us in a method that’s inconceivable to disregard, and the long-term adjustments to our society and financial system shall be large. We’ll discover new issues to do, new methods to be helpful to one another, and new methods to compete, however they might not look very very similar to the roles of as we speak.
Company, willfulness, and willpower will doubtless be extraordinarily useful. Accurately deciding what to do and determining how you can navigate an ever-changing world may have large worth; resilience and adaptableness shall be useful expertise to domesticate. AGI would be the largest lever ever on human willfulness and allow particular person individuals to have extra influence than ever earlier than, not much less.
Altman additionally talked about that the influence of AGI shall be uneven, which might be an enormous understatement. He additionally defined how day-to-day life would possibly change individuals:
The value of many items will ultimately fall dramatically (proper now, the price of intelligence and the price of power constrain a number of issues), and the worth of luxurious items and some inherently restricted sources like land could rise much more dramatically.
He stated the street for OpenAI “seems to be pretty clear,” however it is dependent upon public coverage and collective opinion.
Altman additionally talked about there “will doubtless be some main choices and limitations associated to AGI security that shall be unpopular, directionally, as we get nearer to attaining AGI,” with out disclosing what they might be.
It’s reassuring to see Altman speak about AGI security, however as a ChatGPT person myself, I’d need extra specifics. Altman did point out the necessity to empower people with AI relatively than having it utilized by authoritarian regimes for mass surveillance and lack of autonomy.
Altman additionally famous that “making certain that the advantages of AGI are broadly distributed is crucial,” however that appears an unlikely aim for any product, together with AGI and AI agent variations of ChatGPT. The price of entry could be dropping, however which may not be sufficient for all individuals to make use of AI.
Specifically, it does look like the stability of energy between capital and labor might simply get tousled, and this will likely require early intervention. We’re open to strange-sounding concepts like giving some “compute price range” to allow everybody on Earth to make use of a number of AI, however we will additionally see a number of methods the place simply relentlessly driving the price of intelligence as little as doable has the specified impact.
In closing, Altman stated that anybody in 2025 “ought to have the ability to marshall the mental capability equal to everybody in 2025; everybody ought to have entry to limitless genius to direct nonetheless they’ll think about.”
“There’s quite a lot of expertise proper now with out the sources to totally categorical itself, and if we alter that, the ensuing inventive output of the world will result in large advantages for us all,” Altman concluded.
What ChatGPT thinks about it
Hopefully, the street to AGI and the large AI-related financial transformations that can influence society within the coming years shall be simple to deal with. However there’s no denying that the longer term Altman describes will transfer a number of jobs to AI.
It’s one thing I’ve been contemplating all alongside. It’s why I advised you a couple of days in the past to begin utilizing ChatGPT even in the event you concern or despise AI. Your future job would possibly depend upon understanding how you can deal with and speak to AI. Altman isn’t flawed about human creativity and supervision being essential in a world of AGI and AI brokers.
I fed Altman’s weblog to ChatGPT and requested it whether or not it thought the mission assertion was about itself. As you possibly can see within the screenshot above, ChatGPT acknowledged itself in Altman’s writing.
“Whereas it doesn’t instantly name me out, it’s primarily describing the trajectory I’m on—changing into extra helpful, widespread, and built-in into society,” the chatbot advised me in what’s virtually a summarization of Altman’s musings.
I then requested the AI if it preferred what the weblog stated about its future, totally understanding that ChatGPT can’t “like” or have emotions about something. ChatGPT didn’t shock me, however the AI did give me the professionals and cons of what Altman talked about in his AGI sale pitch.
ChatGPT gave me the great and the dangerous of AGI and AI brokers taking on the world. He recognized the potential strengths of higher AI variations of itself, as outlined by Altman, and the influence smarter, cheaper, and extensively accessible AI can have on humanity.
ChatGPT additionally talked about the regarding points with Altman’s rigorously worded AI imaginative and prescient. The AI talked about points like over-reliance on AI, saying that it “exists to enhance human intelligence, not substitute it.” ChatGPT additionally recognized Altman’s downplaying of the dangers associated to AI stealing jobs and giving sure people and organizations extra energy. Curiously, ChatGPT additionally rhetorically requested, “Who decides how AGI is used? Will it empower people or serve company/authorities pursuits?”
The chatbot’s closing take can also be fascinating and suits nicely with what’s taking place in Paris this week. AI has the potential to be revolutionary if carried out proper, however Altman’s weblog is overly optimistic:
The weblog paints a really optimistic image of AI’s future, however it sidesteps the dangers and challenges that include it. If AGI is developed with the best insurance policies, ethics, and accessibility, it could possibly be revolutionary. But when mishandled, it might create critical societal imbalances.
In brief: The potential is superb, however the path wants cautious steering.
ChatGPT doesn’t have real opinions; no generative AI does. We’ll have to attend for AGI and past for that. Nevertheless, there’s excellent news in the best way OpenAI created ChatGPT. It’s an AI that may deal with all types of questions and supply solutions that will be crucial of its creators, as seen above. That’s already one thing you’d need from AI and one thing merchandise like DeepSeek, with their built-in real-time censorship options, can’t provide.
