Coinworld reported:
Source: Newin
On September 23, Sam Altman published a blog post titled “The Intelligence Age.” Altman emphasized that future technological advancements will enable us to achieve feats that would seem almost “magical” to our ancestors, with accelerated innovation in AI becoming the driving force behind these changes.
Altman explained that historically, humanity has become increasingly capable not due to changes in our genes, but because social infrastructure has become smarter and more powerful. AI will further enhance this, providing humans with new tools to help us solve problems that were previously insurmountable, fostering greater societal prosperity.
He believes we will gradually transition into an era where everyone can have personalized AI assistants that not only assist with our daily tasks but also bring about disruptive changes across various domains, from healthcare to education and software development.
One of his core points—”Deep learning works.” Altman succinctly outlined the key factors behind AI advancements: the success of deep learning and its predictable progress as it scales, a breakthrough that will enhance AI’s ability to tackle complex problems, thereby driving continuous development in science, technology, and the economy.
Moreover, Altman painted a hopeful picture of the “Intelligence Age”: solutions to the climate crisis, the establishment of space colonies, and comprehensive explorations of physics will become commonplace in the future. He envisions humanity entering a new era characterized by nearly limitless intelligence and energy, making it easier to realize great ideas and innovations that promote global shared prosperity.
Here is the complete content of the article, enjoy—
In the coming decades, we will be able to accomplish things that would seem like magic to our grandparents. This phenomenon is not new, but it will be further accelerated. Over time, human capabilities have significantly increased; we have already managed to achieve some things that our predecessors deemed impossible.
Our enhanced abilities are not due to genetic changes, but rather because we benefit from a social infrastructure whose wisdom and capabilities far exceed our individual capacities; in an important sense, society itself represents a form of advanced intelligence.
Our grandparents—and the generations before them—created and achieved great accomplishments. They contributed to the scaffolding of human progress, from which we all benefit.
AI will provide people with tools to solve difficult problems and help us add new pillars to this scaffolding, addressing issues that we cannot resolve on our own. The story of progress will continue, and our children will be able to do things we cannot.
This will not happen overnight, but we will soon be able to collaborate with AI to accomplish more tasks that we cannot complete ourselves; ultimately, each of us could have a personal AI team composed of virtual experts from various fields, collaboratively creating nearly anything we can imagine.
Our children will have virtual mentors capable of providing personalized guidance in any subject, language, and at any pace they require. We can envision similar concepts applied to better healthcare, creating software that anyone can imagine, and more.
As these new capabilities are realized, we can achieve a shared prosperity that seems difficult to imagine today; in the future, everyone’s life could be better than that of anyone today.
Although mere prosperity may not guarantee happiness—many wealthy individuals also suffer—it will significantly improve the lives of people globally.
This is a narrow perspective on human history: after thousands of years of scientific discovery and technological progress, we have figured out how to melt sand, add some impurities, and then arrange them with astonishing precision on an extremely small scale to create computer chips that run energy, producing increasingly capable AI systems.
This may be the most significant fact about history to date. We might have super AI within a few thousand days (!); it may take longer, but I believe we will reach that goal.
How did we arrive at the threshold of this leap in prosperity?
In three words: deep learning works.
In fifteen words: deep learning works, and it becomes predictably better as it scales, with increasing resources invested.
That’s all there is to it; humanity has discovered an algorithm capable of truly learning any data distribution (or, in reality, the underlying “rules” that generate any data distribution). Remarkably, the more computing power and data available, the better it performs in helping people solve problems. No matter how much time I spend contemplating this, I can never fully internalize its importance.
We have many details to clarify, but it is a mistake to be distracted by any specific challenge. Deep learning is effective, and we will solve the remaining issues. We can say much about what may happen next, but the main point is that AI will improve with scale, enhancing the lives of people around the globe.
AI models will soon act as autonomous personal assistants, performing specific tasks for us, such as coordinating our healthcare. At some point in the future, AI systems will become so powerful that they will help us create better next-generation systems and drive scientific advancements across various fields.
Technology has taken us from the Stone Age to the Agricultural Age and then to the Industrial Age. From here, the path to the Intelligence Age is laid on the foundations of computing power, energy, and human will.
If we want to put AI into as many hands as possible, we need to reduce the cost of computation and make it abundant (which requires a significant amount of energy and chips). If we do not build sufficient infrastructure, AI will become a very limited resource, potentially leading to conflicts and primarily becoming a tool for the wealthy.
We need to act wisely yet decisively. The dawn of the Intelligence Age presents a significant advance, accompanied by extremely complex and high-risk challenges. This will not be an entirely positive story, but its potential is immense, and we have a responsibility to address the risks before us for ourselves and future generations.
I believe the future will be so bright that no one can truly express it through writing; a defining characteristic of the Intelligence Age will be immense prosperity.
Although all of this will happen gradually, astonishing victories such as climate restoration, the establishment of space colonies, and comprehensive discoveries in physics will ultimately become commonplace.
With nearly limitless intelligence and abundant energy—the capacity to generate great ideas and the ability to realize those ideas—we can achieve many things.
As we have seen with other technologies, there will also be negative impacts, so we must start working now to maximize the benefits of AI while minimizing its harms.
For instance, we expect this technology to have significant impacts on the labor market in the coming years (both positive and negative), but most jobs will change more slowly than most people anticipate, and I am not concerned that we will run out of things to do (even if these jobs may not seem like “real work” today).
Humans have an inherent desire to create and be useful to one another, and AI will enhance our capabilities in unprecedented ways. As a society, we will once again be in an expanded world, where we can refocus on positive-sum games.
Many of the jobs we perform today would appear as meaningless time-wasting to people from hundreds of years ago, but no one looks back wishing to be a lamplighter.
If a lamplighter could see today’s world, they would find the surrounding prosperity unimaginable. And if we could fast forward to a hundred years from now, the prosperity surrounding us would also be equally incredible
