Benefits of artificial general intelligence should be broadly distributed, says Sam Altman
As artificial intelligence (AI) continues to transform industries worldwide, ensuring that the benefits of artificial general intelligence (AGI) are broadly distributed is crucial, according to OpenAI co-founder and CEO Sam Altman.
In a new blog post, Altman emphasized that while technological progress has historically improved key metrics such as health outcomes and economic prosperity, it has not necessarily led to greater equality. Addressing this challenge may require innovative approaches, he noted.
OpenAI’s mission and AGI definition
“Our mission is to ensure that AGI benefits all of humanity. AGI is a weakly defined term, but generally speaking, we mean it to be a system that can tackle increasingly complex problems, at a human level, across many fields,” Altman wrote.
With AI development progressing rapidly, Altman shared three key observations about the economics of AI.
Key observations on AI economics
- Scaling intelligence with resources
The intelligence of an AI model is roughly proportional to the logarithm of the resources used to train and operate it. These resources include training compute, data, and inference compute. “It appears that you can spend arbitrary amounts of money and get continuous and predictable gains; the scaling laws that predict this are accurate over many orders of magnitude,” he explained. - Declining costs and increased usage
The cost of using a given level of AI decreases approximately tenfold every 12 months, driving widespread adoption. “You can see this in the token cost from GPT-4 in early 2023 to GPT-4o in mid-2024, where the price per token dropped about 150x in that time period. Moore’s Law changed the world at 2x every 18 months; this is unbelievably stronger,” Altman stated. - Super-exponential socio-economic value
The socio-economic value generated by a linear increase in intelligence grows at a super-exponential rate. This suggests that exponentially increasing investments in AI will continue in the foreseeable future. “If these three observations continue to hold true, the impacts on society will be significant,” he added.
The future of AI and AGI deployment
OpenAI is now beginning to roll out AI agents that are expected to function as virtual co-workers.
Altman acknowledged that AGI’s impact will be uneven, with some industries remaining relatively unchanged while others, particularly scientific research, will experience rapid progress.
“Although some industries will change very little, scientific progress will likely be much faster than it is today; this impact of AGI may surpass everything else,” he concluded.
