OpenAI is ready to focus on ‘superintelligence’, boss Sam Altman says
6 January 2025, 21:14
The head of the ChatGPT maker said he believes the firm already knows how to build artificial general intelligence, which can outperform humans.
OpenAI is ready to start focusing on “superintelligence” and is already capable of building artificial general intelligence (AGI) – a level of AI which can outperform humans at most work, boss Sam Altman has said.
Writing on his personal blog, Mr Altman said OpenAI loves its current products, the best known of which is ChatGPT, but added “we are here for the glorious future”.
He said the company was “confident” it now knew how to build AGI – what is seen by many as the next step in the evolution of AI, where the technology is able to autonomously outperform humans in most work.
Mr Altman said he believes that “in 2025, we may see the first AI agents ‘join the workforce and materially change the output of companies'”.
Critics of AI have raised concerns about the technology’s potential impact on the job market, and the possibility that it could replace human workers – something many industry figures have argued is not the aim of AI or tech firms, who say they are aiming to augment and aid human workers, not replace them.
The OpenAI boss said the company was aware of these concerns, and remained committed to safety when it came to the creation and rollout of AI tools.
“We are proud of our track-record on research and deployment so far, and are committed to continuing to advance our thinking on safety and benefits sharing,” he said.
“We continue to believe that the best way to make an AI system safe is by iteratively and gradually releasing it into the world, giving society time to adapt and co-evolve with the technology, learning from experience, and continuing to make the technology safer.
“We believe in the importance of being world leaders on safety and alignment research, and in guiding that research with feedback from real world applications.
“We continue to believe that iteratively putting great tools in the hands of people leads to great, broadly-distributed outcomes.”
He added that the AI start-up was “beginning to turn our aim beyond that (AGI)” and was looking to the level beyond that – the idea of superintelligence capable of taking on and completing even more complex tasks.
Mr Altman said that while superintelligent tools sound like “science fiction right now, the rate of technological advancement meant that “in the next few years, everyone will see what we see, and that the need to act with great care, while still maximising broad benefit and empowerment, is so important”.
“With superintelligence, we can do anything else,” he said.
“Superintelligent tools could massively accelerate scientific discovery and innovation well beyond what we are capable of doing on our own, and in turn massively increase abundance and prosperity,” he said.
