Altman's AI utopia
While some fret over the productivity and revenue case for AI, an article published overnight by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is a reminder that his goals are much loftier.
While many of us have been preoccupied with the ongoing psychodrama of interest rates and the increasingly fraught and contentious politics surrounding them, today offered a reminder that some in the world of business are focusing on issues of a far more grandiose scale.
Overnight, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman published an article — perhaps better described as a manifesto, or a victory lap — titled “The Intelligence Age”. It makes a simple argument: the deep learning models that underpin his company’s AI technology do in fact work, and with the application of vast computing power will irrevocably transform human society.
“Although it will happen incrementally, astounding triumphs — fixing the climate, establishing a space colony, and the discovery of all of physics — will eventually become commonplace,” he wrote.
On the one hand, you can read this as a typical AI evangelist bluster. Anyone who has spent any time in and around AI startups and communities will know they have a quasi-religious quality to them, with more overtly sci-fi aspirations than your average software business. It can be difficult to separate the memes from the reality.
