Sam Altman often refrains from making predictions about the future of artificial intelligence (AI), but the OpenAI CEO recently said that with rapid advancements in technology, “superintelligence” might replace around 40 per cent of tasks that we do today.
In an interview with the German newspaper Die Welt, Altman discussed several topics, including the development of artificial general intelligence (AGI) and its potential impact on jobs, among other issues.
When asked about when superintelligence, or AGI, will be “smarter than humans in all aspects”, Altman said that while GPT5 is already smarter than him and a lot of people, AGI may arrive before the end of the decade. “If we don’t have models [by 2030] that are extraordinarily capable and do things that we ourselves cannot do, I’d be very surprised,” he added.
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The interviewer, Jan Philipp Burgard, also asked Altman what percentage of today’s jobs are likely to disappear in the foreseeable future. Sam Altman replied that he thinks it is useful to talk “about the percentage of tasks, not the percentage of jobs. I can easily imagine a world where 30, 40 per cent of the tasks that happen in the economy today get done by AI in the not very distant future.”
Altman was also asked if he agreed with AI researcher Eliezer Yudkowsky’s view, who believes that the relationship between superintelligence and humans will be like the relationship between humans and ants. To this, he replied that AGI will treat humans like a “loving parent.”
His reply is similar to that of AI godfathers Geoffrey Hinton and Yann LeCun, who have previously stated that it is important to instil “maternal instincts” into AI models so they care about people. Altman also talked about the side effects of AGI, saying that there could be “consequences we don’t understand”, which is why he says we should align it to human values.
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