OpenAI’s Sam Altman says they know how to build AGI

Over the past year there has been a huge amount of buzz and excitement – and trepidation – over the possibility that Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) could emerge by the end of the decade. And now OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, whose company has received billions of dollars worth of investment to develop AGI systems from Microsoft - says that the company is confident that it knows “how to build AGI as we have traditionally understood it,” referring to the tech industry’s long-sought benchmark of AGI. And he predicts that AI agents capable of autonomously performing certain tasks may start to “materially change the output of companies” as early this year.

Altman made the announcement in a blog post published on Monday, where he discussed the past and future of OpenAI. The company’s next goal is “Artificial Super Intelligence (ASI) in the true sense of the word,” he says. “We love our current products, but we are here for the glorious future. Super intelligent 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.”

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Altman’s description of super intelligence, broadly defined as AI agents that surpass human intelligence, sounds much like how OpenAI once described AGI: “AI systems that are generally smarter than humans.” OpenAI has repeatedly stated that its foundational goal is to develop an AGI system that “benefits all of humanity.” But Altman tried to lower expectations for AGI last month, saying it would “matter much less” than people thought.

Downplaying its previous definition of AGI may work in OpenAI’s favor, since the company is tied to Microsoft via exclusivity deals it made in 2023 until OpenAI officially declares that AGI has been achieved. But reports that Microsoft itself classifies AGI as a system capable of generating $100 billion in profits may prove that loophole ineffective. And while reporters have heard that OpenAI plans to blend its Large Language Models (LLMs) together as an “AGI” offering, potentially to hit this goalpost faster, the company isn’t turning a profit yet and last year they turned in a muilti-billion dollar loss despite billions in revenues. Altman also says it’s currently losing money on its $200-per-month ChatGPT Pro subscriptions.

“People use it much more than we expected,” Altman wrote across several posts on X. “I personally chose the price and thought we would make some money.”

Altman doesn’t directly address OpenAI’s tight profit-sharing arrangement with Microsoft in his blog post, but he does lament about the confusing events that led to him being fired as CEO of OpenAI, hired by Microsoft, and subsequently returning to OpenAI in November 2023. Altman has since consolidated power at OpenAI, which aims to transition from a nonprofit organization to a for-profit one this year.

“The whole event was, in my opinion, a big failure of governance by well-meaning people, myself included. Looking back, I certainly wish I had done things differently, and I’d like to believe I’m a better, more thoughtful leader today than I was a year ago,” Altman said. “Good governance requires a lot of trust and credibility. I appreciate the way so many people worked together to build a stronger system of governance for OpenAI that enables us to pursue our mission of ensuring that AGI benefits all of humanity.”