OpenAI chief Sam Altman predicts "Intelligence Age" will bring "next leap in prosperity"

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman sees an "Intelligence Age" coming, with AI bringing huge economic gains in the "next couple of decades."

In a private blog post, Altman writes that humanity is entering a new era driven by artificial intelligence. He predicts AI systems will soon work as personal assistants, offer customized education, and even help with healthcare. Eventually, he thinks they might even make scientific discoveries on their own.

Altman believes superintelligent AI could arrive "in a few thousand days," though he admits it may take longer.

"Deep learning worked"

The OpenAI chief sees deep learning as key to this progress. "Deep learning worked, got predictably better with scale, and we dedicated increasing resources to it," Altman writes.

"That’s really it; humanity discovered an algorithm that could really, truly learn any distribution of data (or really, the underlying “rules” that produce any distribution of data). To a shocking degree of precision, the more compute and data available, the better it gets at helping people solve hard problems."

But he says computing power must expand massively to reach AI's full potential. Otherwise, AI could become scarce and spark conflicts. OpenAI is working with Microsoft on large-scale data center projects.

Altman admits this won't be all positive, expecting major job market disruption. But he believes the social benefits will outweigh negatives overall. Long-term, he thinks AI may help solve major challenges like climate change, space exploration and physics.

"People have an innate desire to create and to be useful to each other, and AI will allow us to amplify our own abilities like never before," Altman writes.