We already knew where OpenAI CEO Sam Altman took AI versus human history: it would be transformative, historic, and hugely beneficial. He has been consistent in countless interviews. For some reason this week he felt it necessary to present these opinions in a concise blog post. “The age of intelligence” as he calls it, will be a time of plenty. “We can share prosperity to a degree that seems unimaginable today; in the future, everyone’s life may be better than anyone’s life today,” he writes. “Though it will happen gradually, the astonishing triumphs – fixing the climate, establishing a space colony, and discovering all of physics – will eventually become commonplace.”
Perhaps he posted this to challenge a line of thinking that dismisses the apparent benefits of immense language models as something of an illusion. Nuh, uh, he says. We’re getting this massive AI premium because “deep learning works,” as he said interview later in the weekmocking those who claimed that programs like OpenAI’s GPT4o are just stupid engines providing the next token in the queue. “Once we can start proving unproven mathematical theorems, do we really still want to debate, ‘Oh, but it’s just a prediction of the next token?'” he said.
No matter what you think of Sam Altman, it is undoubtedly his truth: artificial general intelligence – artificial intelligence that equals and then exceeds human capabilities – will eliminate the problems that plague humanity and usher in a golden age. I suggest calling this deus ex machina concept Strawberry, after the codename of OpenAI’s recent breakthrough in artificial reasoning. Like the cookie, the dish looks appetizing but is less substantial to eat.
Altman rightly notes that the advances in technology have brought to ordinary people what were once luxuries – including luxuries unavailable to pharaohs and lords. Charlemagne never liked air conditioning! Working-class people, and even some on public assistance, have dishwashers, giant-screen TVs, iPhones, and delivery services that deliver pumpkin lattes and pet food to their doors. But Altman doesn’t own up to the whole story. Despite their enormous wealth, not everyone is prosperous, and many are homeless or severely destitute. To paraphrase William Gibson, paradise is here, it’s just not evenly distributed. This isn’t because technology has failed –We To have. I suspect the same will be true as AGI emerges, especially as so many tasks become automated.
Altman isn’t very specific about what life will be like when many of our current jobs go the way of 18th-century lighthouse keepers. We have been given a clue about his vision in podcast this week in which tech luminaries and celebrities were asked to share their Spotify playlists. Explaining why he chose Rüfüs du Sol’s “Underwater,” Altman said it was a tribute to Burning Man, which he had attended several times. The festival, he says, “is part of what post-AGI can look like, where people focus on doing things for each other, taking care of each other, and making amazing gifts to get each other.”
Altman is a massive fan of universal basic income, which he believes will soften the blow of lost wages. Artificial intelligence could indeed generate the wealth to support such a plan, but there is little indication that people who amass fortunes – or even those who still live modestly – will be willing to embrace the concept. Altman may have had a great experience at Burning Man, but it seems some good souls in Playa are up in arms over a proposal to tax a portion of unrealized capital gains that only applies to people worth more than $100 million. It’s questionable to assume that such people – or others who become extremely wealthy working at artificial intelligence companies – will open their coffers to fund leisure time for the masses. One of the major political parties in the US cannot abolish Medicaid, so one can only imagine how populist demagogues will feel about UBI.
I also guard against the supposed bonanza that will come when all our massive problems are solved. Let’s admit that artificial intelligence can actually solve humanity’s greatest puzzles. We, the people, would have to actually implement these solutions, and this is where we have failed time and time again. We don’t need a massive language model to tell us that war is hell and we shouldn’t kill ourselves. However, wars still happen.