According to Cointelegraph, Sam Altman, co-founder and CEO of OpenAI, published a blog post on September 23 celebrating the success of deep learning and claiming that humanity is on the verge of an era of unimaginable prosperity. Altman highlighted that his company's technology could create more powerful versions of itself within decades, accelerating scientific progress across various fields.
Altman's announcement of the “Intelligence Age” is based on the recent debut of OpenAI's “o1” AI model, which is capable of solving problems that previous models struggled with. Despite criticism that deep learning cannot be scaled to create human-level artificial intelligence, Altman asserts that deep learning has worked and improved predictably with scale, leading to increased resource dedication.
Altman envisions a future where AI systems will solve significant global challenges, such as climate change, space colonization, and the discovery of all physics. He acknowledges that these advancements will occur incrementally over time but believes that astounding triumphs will eventually become commonplace. While there is no specific timeline for these changes, Altman suggests that within the next couple of decades, humanity will achieve feats that would have seemed magical to previous generations.
It remains unclear whether Altman's post is a precursor to a new product launch or major announcement, or if it is simply a prediction of the “Intelligence Age.” Nonetheless, Altman expresses optimism about this new era, emphasizing that a defining characteristic will be massive prosperity.