Altman: ChatGPT is more powerful than any human who has ever lived

ChatGPT is already more powerful than any human who has ever lived – at least that's what OpenAI CEO Sam Altman thinks. Hundreds of millions of people already rely on the chatbot every day. It sounds as if the world didn't work before and that it would come to a standstill if the systems were to fail. But luckily, just a few hours ago, ChatGPT experienced widespread outages and the world is still standing.

Things could be different by 2030. Altman sets out his visions for this year in the blog post, which he calls "the gentle singularity". This stands for a change or an irreversible turning point.

Unlimited energy thanks to AI

From 2030, Altman believes, there will be unlimited intelligence and energy. Anyone who previously agreed with Albert Einstein and thought that humanity's stupidity was infinite will now be proven wrong by Altman: intelligence can be infinite. And so can energy. He doesn't say a word about where it comes from in this essay. What we do know is that Altman and OpenAI are investing in fusion energy.

Thanks to AI, he writes, science can achieve in a year or even a month what previously took it a decade. Then, of course, the fusion power plant can go into operation the day after tomorrow.

Altman also dreams that we will only have to build the first hundred humanoid robots ourselves, which will then be able to manufacture all the other robots themselves. And that means the entire supply chain along – from digging for minerals to delivery by truck. However, Elon Musk's humanoid robots are still controlled by real people because they are obviously not good enough otherwise. Perhaps Atlas from Boston Dynamics will soon be able to build a commercial.

ChatGPT consumes one second of oven time

One of the interesting facts from the blog post is that Altman provides information on ChatGPT's energy consumption. A typical request costs about as much energy as a little more than a second of an oven on – 0.34 watt-hours. A good light bulb consumes that much in a few minutes. In addition, 0.000085 gallons of water are needed to cool the data centers. That is 0.00032176 liters. Altman does not provide any further details on this calculation.

It is difficult to imagine what will have been discovered by 2035. "Maybe we'll solve high-energy physics one year and start colonizing space the next; or we'll make a major breakthrough in materials science one year and develop true high-bandwidth brain-computer interfaces the next." Altman also points out that security problems must be solved by then – both technically and socially. How can this be done? You have to make sure that AI systems learn the right things. We also need to ensure that superintelligence is available to everyone at low cost. AI still has to discover how to do this.

But at least Altman is certain that in 2030 we will still love our families, play games and swim in lakes.

(emw)