IBL News | New York
Sam Altman, CEO at OpenAI, wrote a post, with no AI help, titled “The Gentle Singularity” this month.
IBL News summarized Sam Altman’s thoughts:
“As datacenter production gets automated, the cost of intelligence should eventually converge to near the cost of electricity. (People are often curious about how much energy a ChatGPT query uses; the average query uses about 0.34 watt-hours, about what an oven would use in a little over one second, or a high-efficiency lightbulb would use in a couple of minutes. It also uses about 0.000085 gallons of water; roughly one fifteenth of a teaspoon.)”
These are the most remarkable thoughts expressed by the author:
• “The takeoff has started. Humanity is close to building digital superintelligence.”
• “We have recently built systems that are smarter than people in many ways.”
• “The gains to quality of life from AI driving faster scientific progress and increased productivity will be enormous; the future can be vastly better than the present.”
• “2025 has seen the arrival of agents that can do real cognitive work; writing computer code will never be the same. 2026 will likely see the arrival of systems that can figure out novel insights. 2027 may see the arrival of robots that can do tasks in the real world.”
• “With advanced AI is we may be able to discover new computing substrates, better algorithms, and who knows what else.”
• “We will build ever-more-wonderful things for each other.”
• “By 2035, maybe we will go from solving high-energy physics one year to beginning space colonization the next year; or from a major materials science breakthrough one year to true high-bandwidth brain-computer interfaces the next year.”
• “We (the whole industry, not just OpenAI) are building a brain for the world. It will be extremely personalized and easy for everyone to use; we will be limited by good ideas.”
• “OpenAI is a lot of things now, but before anything else, we are a superintelligence research company. We have a lot of work in front of us, but most of the path in front of us is now lit, and the dark areas are receding fast.”
• “May we scale smoothly, exponentially and uneventfully through superintelligence.”
OpenAI is selling premium AI services to universities trying to “become part of the core infrastructure of higher education,” said Leah Belsky, OpenAI’s vice president of education and former manager at Coursera, in 
