Sam Altman says superintelligence is on the way, and the future is bright – SiliconANGLE

OpenAI Chief Executive Sam Altman published a blog post today stating that the world will have superintelligence in “a few thousand days” and what he sees ahead is not the techno-dystopia some critics see but “massive prosperity.”

Altman’s post was only a few hundred words long, but he managed to pack it with enough assertions about the future to fill a few hundred counter-argument books. He admitted that the arrival of superintelligence might take a tad longer than he expects, but it’s coming, he says, and we’ll soon “be able to do things that would have seemed like magic to our grandparents.”

His contentions are a far cry from those who are concerned about our machine-led future and the prospect of an ever-expanding wealth gap. Altman, who’s heavily invested in this revolution, sees machines not as great replacers but as fantastic augmenters, as do many people who are not even betting on AI becoming superintelligent anytime soon.

“We are more capable not because of genetic change, but because we benefit from the infrastructure of society being way smarter and more capable than any one of us; in an important sense, society itself is a form of advanced intelligence,” he wrote, adding that AI will solve the “hard problems” and create a foundation from where we can pole-vault into a better future.

This future, he says, will enhance every aspect of our lives. He sees humans – we can assume he includes hoi polloi – each having their own “personal AI team” to get through the day, teams of “virtual experts” thread into the weft of our daily existence, relieving our lives of the knots and contaminations that presently make it difficult. “Working together to create almost anything we can imagine,” he contends.

His future is a world where virtual tutors take the stress out of studying because they understand each child’s unique needs. Presumably, everyone will get the education they require and will have the skills to become successful in a world where jobs are plentiful, and this will give us a “shared prosperity to a degree that seems unimaginable today.”

It’s a nice vision, a wonderful vision, but a more skeptical person might wonder if utopia is so close to being within our grasp, or if utopias, in general, are merely figments of human imaginations given that we seem to be built for conflict and self-preservation. Will AI re-program hardwired human evolutionary characteristics? Will a hyper-connection with technology have any downsides, as it seems we are figuring about social media?

Maybe his vision is just not as clouded as the vision of us mere mortals. He does accept there will be problems in the road ahead, such as disruption to the labor market, but he says this will be ironed out, and sounding like Karl Marx, he contends humans will soon be free of mind-numbing toil to enjoy the better things in life. If this happens in a few thousand days, you should probably start planning to put your feet up.

“The dawn of the Intelligence Age is a momentous development with very complex and extremely high-stakes challenges,” Altman concluded. “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.”

Some observers are skeptical of his mostly positive view. Gary Marcus, who has been called “AI’s leading critic,” provided a marked-up version of the essay with a raft of “corrections,” calling it “a sales piece, not a work of science,” which it didn’t seem to claim to be.

“Ah blah blah blah blah,” added Ed Zitron, CEO of EZPR. “Every time this guy talks it’s drivel and vague over promises. ‘Ai systems are going to get so good they will help us make better next generation systems and make scientific progress across the board’ is trump language.”

But essentially, it’s a plea for more AI infrastructure, which Altman has already indicated he’s willing to spend billions of other people’s money to build.

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