Sam Altman predicts massive prosperity in the intelligence age: a glimpse into AI’s future
In his recent essay The Intelligence Age, Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, shared his vision for a future shaped by artificial intelligence (AI). He forecasts radical transformations in society and global problem-solving driven by advancements in AI technology. Kazinform correspondent reports on the details.
Altman believes that the intelligence age, like the agricultural and industrial ages before it, will redefine human life and work, ushering in a new era of prosperity that we can barely comprehend today.
“In the next couple of decades, we will be able to do things that would have seemed like magic to our grandparents,” Altman writes. He envisions a future where AI becomes an integral part of human life, aiding in unprecedented levels of creativity and productivity. “It won’t happen all at once, but we’ll soon be able to work with AI that helps us accomplish much more than we ever could without AI; eventually we can each have a personal AI team, full of virtual experts in different areas, working together to create almost anything we can imagine.”
Altman attributes this imminent leap in human potential to the success of deep learning. “How did we get to the doorstep of the next leap in prosperity? In three words: deep learning worked. In 15 words, deep learning worked, got predictably better with scale, and we dedicated increasing resources to it.” He emphasizes that the more data and computational power available, the more effective AI becomes at solving complex problems. “To a shocking degree of precision, the more compute and data available, the better it gets at helping people solve hard problems.”
While the essay paints a picture of immense opportunity, Altman acknowledges the challenges and risks. “There are a lot of details we still have to figure out, but it’s a mistake to get distracted by any particular challenge.” He urges a balanced approach, combining optimism with cautious planning. “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.”
One of the critical issues Altman highlights is ensuring equitable access to AI technology. Without adequate infrastructure, AI could become a limited resource accessible only to the wealthy, leading to societal conflicts. “Technology brought us from the Stone Age to the Agricultural Age and then to the Industrial Age. From here, the path to the intelligence age is paved with compute, energy, and human will. If we want to put AI into the hands of as many people as possible, we need to drive down the cost of computation 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 warns.
Despite potential disruptions to labor markets, Altman reassures that AI will create new opportunities for human creativity and utility. “As we have seen with other technologies, there will also be downsides, and we need to start working now to maximize AI’s benefits while minimizing its harms. As one example, we expect that this technology can cause a significant change in labor markets (good and bad) in the coming years, but most jobs will change more slowly than most people think, and I have no fear that we’ll run out of things to do (even if they don’t look like “real jobs” to us today). People have an innate desire to create and to be useful to each other, and AI will allow us to amplify our own abilities like never before.”
He compares the shift to previous technological revolutions, pointing out that jobs we now consider essential would have seemed trivial in the past. “If a lamplighter could see the world today, he would think the prosperity all around him was unimaginable. And if we could fast-forward a hundred years from today, the prosperity all around us would feel just as unimaginable.”
Altman concludes with a hopeful outlook: “I believe the future is going to be so bright that no one can do it justice by trying to write about it now; a defining characteristic of the intelligence age will be massive prosperity." He is confident that AI will not only solve many of the world’s hardest problems but also redefine what humanity is capable of achieving.
