Everyday AI Podcast – An AI and ChatGPT Podcast - EP 365: Sam Altman’s New Take on Superintelligence: What it means and are we that close?

Episode Date: September 24, 2024

Are we really 'a few thousand' days from Superintelligence? Also, what the heck does Superintelligence even mean? We're breaking down the latest hot takes from Sam Altman and simplifying superintelligence. Newsletter: Sign up for our free daily newsletterMore on this Episode: Episode PageJoin the discussion: Ask Jordan questions on AIUpcoming Episodes: Check out the upcoming Everyday AI Livestream lineupWebsite: YourEverydayAI.comEmail The Show: [e-mail] with Jordan on LinkedInTopics Covered in This Episode:1. Definition and Discussion of AI Levels2. Defining superintelligence and its implications3. Major Historical Transitions and Their Relevance to AI4. Review and Analysis of Sam Altman's Perspective5. Sam Altman’s Influence on AITimestamps:00:00 Are we thousands of days from superintelligence?04:12 AI advancements amplify human capabilities and innovation.09:06 Superintelligence theoretical; AGI practical; Altman's rising influence.10:02 Sam Altman became globally significant in AI.15:40 Share your predictions about utopian or dystopian futures.19:55 Generative AI creates multimodal outputs from inputs.22:06 AI systems excel in narrow, specific tasks.25:45 I'd choose large language models for problem solving.29:00 WorkLab podcast: insights for evolving work leaders.32:03 AI likened to internet's skeptical early reception.34:10 Is AI progress genuine or just marketing?38:08 Advancing AI redefines AGI achievement; ASI unclear.40:57 Superintelligence may be achieved within our lifetime.Keywords:Jordan Wilson, advancements in AI, superintelligence, safe superintelligence, everyday AI, everydayai.com, generative AI, chat GPT, Artificial Narrow Intelligence, ANI, Artificial General Intelligence, AGI, Artificial Superintelligence, ASI, WorkLab Podcast, Microsoft, historical periods, technological transitions, Sam Altman, Intelligence Age, AI in business, OpenAI, skepticism about AI, AI definitions, timeline for superintelligence, utopian superintelligence, dystopian superintelligence, audience interaction, superintelligence debate, AI integrationSend Everyday AI and Jordan a text message. (We can't reply back unless you leave contact info)

This is the Everyday AI Show, the everyday podcast where we simplify AI and bring its power to your fingertips. Listen daily for practical advice to boost your career, business, and everyday life. Meet Firefly AI Assistant, now live and Adobe Firefly, the all-in-one creative AI studio. Just describe what you want to create and the assistant handles the rest, orchestrating multi-step workflows across Photoshop, Premiere Express, and more in one conversational interface. You direct the outcome. The assistant accelerates execution. Are we actually a few thousand days from super intelligence?

I mean, aren't we all just getting used to generative AI? And now we're skipping past AGI and artificial general intelligence and skipping straight to super intelligence? Is this actually happened? So Sam Altman just wrote a pretty in-depth blog post about super intelligence, saying that we are thousands of days away. So I'm wondering, is that the truth or is that just a very timely announcement? Is this marketing for Open AI?

I don't know, but we're going to be unraveling it all in learning together. So what's going on, y'all? My name is Jordan Wilson, and I'm the host of Everyday AI. And this is your daily live stream podcast and free daily newsletter, helping everyday people learn and leverage generative AI to grow their company, and to grow their careers. Speaking of growing your company and career, have to give a quick shout out to our partners at Microsoft

and talk about WorkLab. So why should you listen to the WorkLab podcast from Microsoft? Because it's made for leaders who know they must adapt to stay ahead. WorkLab is the place to find real world lessons and actionable insights to prepare you for the next phase of AI at work. That's W-O-R-K-L-A-B, No Space. available wherever you get your podcasts. All right. Thanks again to Microsoft for partnering with us for Everyday AI, but this is Everyday AI and you're tuning in

maybe live. So yes, this is a live stream podcast free daily newsletter. If you haven't already, make sure to go to your everyday AI.com to sign up for that free daily newsletter and for news normally every single day we go over the news, but I think this topic is so important. I just wanted to jump straight into it. So yeah, We'll still have the normal daily news recaps. If you tune in for that, sorry, we'll still have that on our website. So make sure you go check it out. Speaking of our newsletter, you guys wanted the show, right?

I asked you, I don't know, I think we got about 14, 15,000 people in the newsletter. I said, hey, do you guys want to talk about this tomorrow? You guys said overwhelmingly yes. So let's get straight into it and talk about what happened. So Sam Altman, the CEO and co-founder of OpenAI, wrote a very kind of out of left field, I would say, blog post about the intelligence age, mainly talking about super intelligence. All right. So don't worry over the course of the next 20 some 30 minutes. I'm going to give you all the definitions.

All right. So we're going to get there. but I first wanted to start off by saying what he said, all right, and talking about that. And I also, actually, before that, I have to give out a shout out to our live audience. Yeah, so it is hot take Tuesday. So let me know, should I keep this one soft? Should I stick to the facts? Or should I, you know, maybe roast, roast what's going on here.

So thanks for everyone tuning in. Rolando, Denny, Kurt, Liz, Tara, everyone else, Chris, Brian, Marie. Michael. Michael beats me to the show every morning. Love to see it. All right. So let's talk about what Sam Altman said, and then let's break it all down. All right. So I'm not going to read the entire thing this episode, but I'm going to read a couple excerpts, give you some more facts and give you maybe my hot take on it. All right. So since Tara said, Burn, Baby Burn, and Michael gave me six flame emojis, I might have to. So here's a couple excerpts from what Sam Altman wrote. He said, in the next couple of decades, we will be able to do things that would have seemed like magic

to our grandparents. This phenomenon is not new, but it will be newly accelerated. People have become dramatically more capable over time. We can already accomplish things now that our predecessors would have believed to be impossible. Uh, skipping around here and then saying, how do we get to the doorstep of the next leap in prosperity? In three words, deep learning worked. In 15 words, deep learning worked, got predictably better with scale, and we dedicated increasing

resources to it. All right. And then he said, it won't happen all at once, but we'll soon be able to work with AI that helps us accomplish much more than we ever could without AI. Eventually, we can each have a personal AI team full of virtual experts. in different areas working together to create almost anything we can imagine. And then here is the crux of it, right? This may turn out to be the most consequential fact about all of history so far.

Bold claim there. Hot Take Tuesday, Sam Altman. Then he said, it is possible that we will have super intelligence in a few thousand days. Let me repeat that. This is Sam Altman, the co-founder and CEO of one. one of the most important companies in the world, saying it is possible that we will have super intelligence in a few thousand days. It may take longer, but I'm confident we'll get there. All right. So what does that mean? That's a nice, it's a nice buffer there, right, a few thousand

days. So let's just say 3,000 to 5,000, right? I don't know. When someone says a few to me, I think three to five, right? Can have a few pieces of pizza. I'm not having it. I'm not having. I'm having one or two. I'm having three or five, right? So three thousand days, that's eight years. All right. In five thousand days, that's 13 years. All right. So for argument's sake for the rest of this episode, let's just say what Sam Altman is talking about here is somewhere in eight to 13 years. So a decade, give or take a few years. That's wild. This is an absolutely wild take kind of out of nowhere. Right? We're over here just enjoying, you know, large language models, trying to keep up with this new phase of artificial intelligence called generative AI, right? Playing around with Claude 35 Sonnet and Gemini 1.5, Gemini, Google is supposed to have some announcements today. And, you know, then we get this O-1 model from OpenAI. And that makes us all think, right? And Sam Altman, you know, at this, this T-Mobile conference, we talked about it on the show yesterday, essentially said, hey, we've gone to this next step. All right, this next step of AGI.

So they laid out, Open AI laid out their five steps. Okay. And essentially, Sam Altman acknowledged that this new model, 01, was a pivot from. step two to step three. Step two is reasoners. And step three is agents. Okay. So this new kind of strawberry model that came out called O-1, it is in its, it's in its own class, right? So I've said that a couple of times. And he said as much, right, at this T-Mobile event this week, saying this was a pivot kind of going from step two to step three in open a in open a i's five step toward a GI but where did a s i come from right this artificial superintelligence

and are we actually going to get there in 10 years give or take i don't i don't know i'm wild. It's it's it's a wild take. Here's here's the thing and we're going to go into a little history lesson right. We like to bring bring facts and receipts at everyday AI not just you know old man Jordan on the porch rambling but no reputable expert has put an actual timeline this close to super intelligence. All right and most of the smartest people in the world have said that this concept of artificial super intelligence is theoretical, right? And we're going to break it down, but don't worry, but think of artificial super intelligence. It's when, you know, some people think, oh, it's when you got, you know, terminators walking around. But essentially, it's when the AI systems

are much smarter than human intelligence. And it's not even close across all aspects, right? And it's when kind of AI is building its own AI, right? And when it can go off the guardrails for good or bad reasons, okay? But most have said that this concept of superintelligence, this is more theoretical than practical than something that we could actually achieve, right? AGI, I think is practical. I'd say we're closer than most people want to talk about artificial general intelligence. All right. But I also think it's important to say, to note who this is coming from and how even Sam Altman's status. And I'm not going to say in tech culture, right?

But I'm going to say how his status in the world, in the business world in particular, has changed so quickly over the past two years, right? Two years ago, you know, this was before Chad Chip-T, right? Before the chat GPT moment of November 2020, right? Two years ago, very few people in the world. knew who Sam Altman was, right? You had to be kind of a dork like me, you know, talk about it all the time. Our team had been using the GBT technology now for almost four years, right?

But very few people knew who Sam Altman was two years ago. Now I would make the argument he is maybe one of the most important people in the world. And that sounds strange. I'm not saying one of the most important people in AI or one of the most important people in tech. And I'm not saying that as like a fanboy either, right? And here's why I say that and why I think we have to actually pay attention to what Sam Altman is saying here. You're listening on a device right now, right? Maybe your iPhone or, you know, maybe you're on your Windows copilot plus PC, right?

Windows, so Microsoft and Apple, they kind of control everything of how we interact with others, with the world, how we get information, right? Because for the most part, you know, when you're doing your work, you're either doing it on Apple or you're doing it on Microsoft Windows, right? And guess what? Both of those companies have put their future behind OpenAI, right? Their new operating systems are literally being powered by the GPT technology, right? And that's strange for one company in OpenAI and Sam.

Maltman to have a stranglehold on our devices, right? Yeah, normally it's like you split in a half. But now the GPT technology is going to be powering our day-to-day interactions with our devices. And let's be real. As modern-day humans, we are glued to our devices, right? And I think that artificial intelligence is going to start creeping into our lives more and more. And I think we are going to start recognizing it less and less, right? Simple things like when Siri becomes actually useful, right?

And when our devices just bring us AI and we don't even really realize it's AI, guess what? Guess who's behind that, whether your Windows or Apple, right, which is probably like 95% of people in the world. Guess who's behind that now? Open AI and Sam Altman. Again, two years ago, most people didn't know who he was. Today, he is potentially one of the most important. people in the world, whether you believe that or not, because of AI's overarching just impact on our day-to-day lives, the future of work, and maybe the future of humanity?

I don't know, right? I don't have a tinfoil hat if you're listening on the podcast today. If you're joining us live, you can see. I just got my normal fluffy hair. But I don't have a tinfoil hat, right? Like, I'm not one of those, you know, dystopian future kind of people. saying, oh, you know, AI is going to take over the world. I mean, could it? Maybe. But we don't get to that point. Whatever that dystopian or utopian future is with AI, if we get to artificial super

intelligence, we don't get there without Sam Altman. We don't get there without open AI. There's no way around that. So that's why when he says something like this, we have to pay close attention. Right? And yeah, so when we talk about this concept of super intelligence or, you know, what happens next, right? And is it even possible? Super intelligence is when AI is, you know, building its own AI. It's smarter than all of us. We don't even understand the intelligence that AI has, right? Is that a line from a JZ song? You know, when we don't even understand the intelligence that AI has because it is beyond human intelligence. That is, super intelligence. And there's two main schools of thoughts on this is this utopian school of

thought around superintelligence that it can cure all diseases, can solve world hunger, you know, leads to harmony and world peace. You know, we have to work less. Maybe we don't have to work at all, right? Bill Gates and Sam Altman had a podcast conversation on that, right, like the future of human existence, right? Why are we here? What is our purpose? Right. But so there's the utopian side. of superintelligence. And then there's the dystopian side. So that is SkyNet, Terminator, rise of the machines, right? We're all jobless. There's crime and hunger, man versus machine. And theoretically, again, I don't know, Sam Altman says, give or take, right? I gave you guys the math, a few thousand, a few thousand days, three to five thousand days. That's eight to 13 years.

I mean, are we going to see in 18 to 13 years, either this utopian future of all diseases are eradicated because of superintelligence, or are we going to see this man versus machine rise of the terminators? I don't know. Even when I sit here today, thinking that that could be eight to 13 years away is mind boggling to me. I almost don't believe it, but, you know, that's why I'm not, you know, a trillionaire, I guess, living in Silicon Valley and I'm here hanging out with you all smart people as an everyday person. But I want to know your take. I want to know your take as well. All right.

I'm going to, we're going to feature some of our favorite takes in today's newsletter. So make sure, hey, especially our our live stream audience, get your take in. Do you think, which of these futures are we going to see? Are we going to see this utopian future of super intelligence? Are we going to see this dystopian future? is it going to happen? Is it not going to happen? Is it going to happen in two years? Is it going to happen in 200? I want to hear from you because you all are very smart. And sometimes when I'm looking at this and what people like Sam Altman say, I'm scratching my head and I'm like, I don't understand this. I don't.

All right. So we'll get more on the article here in a little bit. But I want to talk a little bit about definitions. Okay. Yeah, I know. You know, we got to go to school here. We got to go to school a little bit. All right. Because if you are brand new, maybe this concept of super intelligence is super confusing. I get it. You know, because every new day, there's a new buzzword and a new large language model. And we're talking about different levels of artificial intelligence and these benchmarks and MMLUs, right? Let's simplify it. All right. Let's talk about these, I think, these five very distinct, I'll say categories. Maybe. Maybe. categories of artificial intelligence or definitions. All right. So we have artificial intelligence.

We have generative AI. We have artificial narrow intelligence. And then we have artificial superintelligence. All right. Let's quickly, let's quickly break these definitions down. Artificial intelligence is nothing new. Right. Its origins can technically be traced back to the 90s. 1940s, but it was a concept introduced in 1956. All right, so artificial intelligence in the simplest form, and I am literally making this as simple as possible, right? Because I know some of you guys are out walking your dogs or maybe on the treadmill, you know,

I love when people tell me, they're like, you know, Jordan, I get on the treadmill before the show and I stay on there until it's done. So sometimes I'm like, hey, I feel bad when I rant accidentally for 45 minutes, when I could have wrapped this up for 30 minutes. for 30 minutes, but maybe that's just me looking out for your health, right? But artificial intelligence, nothing new.

Been around for many decades, half of a century or more, depending on what you look at it as, and artificial intelligence and kind of deep learning, machine learning, has been used widely in the business world, going back many decades, back to the 70s and the 80s, the experts boom, right? Artificial intelligence itself is not new, right? And whether you know it or not, right? Like if you ever applied for a home loan or a credit card, you know, back 30, 40 years ago, there was probably artificial intelligence involved.

You just didn't know it yet. Now let's talk about generative AI, right? What's all this buds? Generative AI. Well, this is, I'd say new-ish, right? You could technically say this is in the mid-2010s, but I would say there is a line in the sand. I'm not going to argue with Nvidia CEO Jensen Wong, you know, who says, hey, generative AI was the chat GPT moment.

Even though you can say, oh, you know, there was transformers and, you know, 2017 and some of the underlying technology, you know, earlier in the 2010s, let's just say generative AI is the chat GPT moment of 2022. All right. And generative AI, the big difference is it is AI democratized, right? It brings AI, right? Because before to take advantage of artificial intelligence, pregenerative AI, you might have to have like a PhD in machine learning or you had to be a super geek, right?

Sorry, super geeks out there. Hopefully you don't take offense to that. But it was very hard to actually use AI pre-2020, all right? Or pre-2020. But essentially, generative AI is text to anything or actually anything to anything. Right? So it's creating something new. So it can be text to text, right?

You're using AI when you're using a chat GPT, a Google Gemini, anthropic clod, you know, models like AI images, like mid-journey, you know, these diffusion models or, you know, runway like text to video, right? And then we're getting into this multimodality phase as well, right, where you can upload a photo and it will make you a website, right? You can upload a photo into chat, GBT, and say, hey, make this into a website. or you can upload a video into runway and have it turn it into a different kind of video, right? So this generative AI is a multimodal input that generates a multimodal output with artificial intelligence.

And it is artificial intelligence democratized. Now let's talk about artificial narrow intelligence. This is something that we don't talk about a lot. Technically, I think it's called A-N-I, but this has already been achieved. Okay. So artificial narrow intelligence is when an AI system is better than the smartest human in the world at a narrow or specific task. Okay. So good example of that, right? You had Watson on Jeopardy, right, an AI system beating the smartest humans. You had deep blue, you know, beating the, I think that was in Alpha Go in 2016, Deep Blue in 1997. So many of these innovations. were early IBM inventions, right? But we've had examples of artificial narrow intelligence now for multiple decades. And that is when an AI system has proven itself to be better than the smartest human

in one specific task, in one specific narrow place, right? Niche, skill set, category. And, you know, hey, hot take. It's hot take Tuesday. said bring bring the flames right um i think if you look at artificial narrow intelligence right yes there was these very very famous and highly visible early examples right uh jeopardy uh alpha go deep blue and chess right i'd say we we have artificial narrow intelligence probably everywhere right maybe not everywhere but i mean you literally have um AI systems solving decades

old math problems that humans, the smartest humans have spent their careers trying to solve, the smartest humans in the world could never solve this problem. A specific AI system could, right? That's an example of artificial narrow intelligence. But that same system, right, that solved that decades old math problem, right? That one can't go create, you know, and that was called Fun Search from DeepMind at Google, right, a Fun Search LLM, solved this decades-old math problem. That same model cannot go out and write me a blog post and create me a video, and it can't also diagnose a certain disease

or to create a new protein, right? That system is narrow. It was built for one very specific purpose and to outperform, us on that one very specific purpose, right? That is narrow intelligence. Then we have to talk about AGI or artificial general intelligence. That is when we get human level intelligence across kind of like all tasks, right? And here's the reality. This is when we talked about, you know, this five step, five step plan, right? The five step plan for open.

AI for AGI. This is a moving goalpost, right? The concept of artificial general intelligence, right? And let me go through just so you all know what Open AI, since we're talking about Sam Altman's blog post on ASI or Super Intelligence, let's talk about their five levels internally. So level one is conversational AI, which we've had for a long time. Level two, and this is toward AGI is reasoners. Level three is agents.

Level four is innovators. And level five is essentially organizations, right? When AIs can possess intelligence of an entire organization. So when we talk about AGI, think it's a moving goalpost. And I'd say most people right now say that we are maybe two to 20 years out. I know that's a wide range, but also I did a whole show. on artificial general intelligence a couple of weeks ago. And I broke this down for you as well because literally eight years ago,

most of the earliest projections for AGI were in the 2050s. Let me repeat that. Eight years ago, most projections for artificial general intelligence were in the 2050s. All right. Now when you look at it, it's different. I'd say the smartest people that like, I'm like, Oh, yeah, these people are smart. They're saying less than five years, right?

I'm in that boat as well. But this Sam Altman thing, a few thousand days to super intelligence, I don't know. That, to me, blows this even AGI timeline out of the water, right? I was in a closed-door session with NVIDIA CEO Jensen Wong a few months ago, where he was asked about this. And yeah, he said, yeah, probably less than five years. and I would tend to agree, right? Let me ask you this question. And let me be honest, right?

If you had to be locked in a room for a year, would you rather have 100 of the smartest people in their specific fields, or would you have the most capable large language models, right? An unlimited use case. And I'm not saying like four, companionship and to not go crazy. But if your only goal was to solve problems and these problems were across a various,

various expertise, right? I don't know. I would take the large language model every single time. It's not even close because here's here's the reality. Even the people who are the smartest people in their fields, there are things even in their field that they probably get wrong sometimes. Right. And for me, I'd rather have one model than to have to talk to a hundred different people.

That's me. But that's this concept of AGI, right? Is a single chatbot smarter than a room full of experts? That's always how I define AGI because it is moving goalposts. But yeah, now that timeline, it might be wild. all right apparently we're blowing it up yeah people make things messy i like that sometimes sometimes i enjoy talking to computers more than humans uh all right now let's talk about asi what is the definition of super intelligence what is this thing that sam altman is writing this long blog post about

uh all right so this is when ai surpasses human intelligence in all areas right not just narrowly not official general intelligence. But this is when essentially AI systems are self-healing. They're self-improving, right? Ah, you know, GPT-7's like, ah, human, I'm good. Right. Yeah. You're slowing me down. We'll take it from here. We'll work on GPT8 and GPT9 and we'll work on curing cancer and world poverty. You can stay at home, right? We really don't need you. You're dumb, right? That's that super intelligence. That's ASI. And for the longest time, this has been a theoretical term, right?

And like I said, this Sam Altman saying this is probably the most prominent person putting an actual timeline on super intelligence, right? But the funny thing is, I laughed at this anyways, right? Got a big blog post and then say, hey, wait a few couple thousand days. All right. In the AI community, there's a joke with open A8. eye, you get a blog post, and you get a wait list. And it seems like that's what we got with super intelligence as well, right? We got a blog post and then say it, wait a few thousand days.

But what you don't have to wait a few thousand days for is work lab. It's out now. All right, let me tell you a little bit more about the work lab podcast from our partners, Microsoft. So the work lab podcast from Microsoft is made for leaders who want to understand how work is changing, Effective leaders adapt, they stay ahead of trends, and they embrace any edge they can get. They also know that AI-powered organizations will be better at spotting opportunities, creating new products and business models, and maximizing value. So for real-world lessons and actionable insights to help you stay ahead, check out the Work Lab podcast.

That's W-O-R-K-L-A-B, No Spaces, available wherever you get your podcasts. All right, thank you to Microsoft, our partners there. So let's just jump into this bigger picture here. Okay, so we talked about super intelligence and kind of these definitions, but what Sam Altman here is talking about is something bigger, right? The title of the blog post, which we already read some of the most important excerpts from, is called the Intelligence Age. All right.

And without having to, you know, dive into these graphs here, human history is largely broken into different periods, right? Different ages. And I want to talk about those here real quick. So you have the Stone Age, right? That's when we're just banging rocks around. All right. And then in the, in these, these years are approximate, y'all.

So middle ages or medieval ages, you know, 500 to 1500. Then you have the Renaissance age in the 1700s. And then maybe the modern era in the age. in the 1800s. And then we go into the industrial ages in the mid-1800s to the mid-1900s. Then we have the digital age, right, of the late 1900s. So essentially, we have these different eras in human history. And largely, they are marked by certain inventions or innovations that change how we all not just work, but how we live.

right so even when you talk about uh electricity right electricity was invented in the 1600s and it became popularized in the 1800s right so in the modern era or the Renaissance age and then in the industrial age right so we had manufacturing and warehouses and assemblies right in the mid-1800 and 1900s, and that changed how we worked, right? It changed how we lived. And you could say the same thing to be true with the digital age of the late 1900s, right? We had the internet, then we have social media, we have the cloud, we have mobile devices, right? So that's part of this digital age. That changed how we work, right? I don't know if you guys remember like working in pre-internet era, I started working full time as a journalist when I was 16 or 17 years old.

So, you know, I had a computer. But the internet was still a very new thing and people didn't know how to how to treat it, right? Especially if you're working in newspapers. People were looking at, you know, the internet like it was the devil. And I think that's also how people kind of look at AI right now. Right. And we have to look. Is artificial intelligence and generative AI?

Is this a new age? Is this going to change how we all work? how we all live. And I think it depends on if you have that more dystopian outlook on the future of AI or a more utopian outlook. All right. And we have to think and have this conversation. Is this real?

Is what Sam Baltimore's talking about? Like I said, regardless of your view on San Alton, whether you think he's the next Steve Jobs or you think he's selling us snake oil, it doesn't matter. Because like I said, he is now one of the most influential people. Microsoft and Apple are placing their immediate futures on the technology that he's building. So is this real? Are we actually, you know, is super intelligence a few thousand days away? Are we actually entering this new era of human history? this intelligence age, right, where intelligence is commoditized, I believe in that part, right? I believe that in 10 years, you're not going to be rewarded, you know, whether you're a business

owner or in your company, in your job, you're not going to be rewarded for what you know, right? You're not going to be promoted or get a raise or get a new job from your domain expertise. It is how you leverage AI in your domain that I think will be rewarded. So I do think intelligence is changing, but is it really a shift in human history? Or is this maybe just some timely marketing from Open AI? Yeah, got to talk about that, y'all. You didn't think I was going to bring up the elephant in the room, y'all? The $6.5 billion elephant, you didn't think I was going to talk about it?

is it a happenstance or is it intentional that Sam Altman released this blog post about this and you know go read it it'll be in our newsletter he obviously presented a very utopian future of super intelligence i would say you know he did about 90% utopian 10% dystopian right 90% rainbows and baby kittens and 10% bad guys um when i think it's I mean, you have to actually look at it 50-50. Because when you talk like that, I think people automatically distrust you. But it just so happens that in the one-day span,

that Open AI is supposed to be closing its fundraising round of $6.5 billion, right? Making it the largest fundraising round in human history. All right? Coincidence? Maybe. Also, this blog post comes from recent reports from about six or seven weeks ago. That said, Open AI is also losing up to $5 billion in 2024.

We don't know if those reports are true or not. But you got to think, you got to think. Is Sam Altman coming and putting his foot in the sand? and kind of, you know, planting his AI flag on the AI moon and saying, yes, we are achieving superintelligence in a couple thousand days. Is that real or is it marketing? All right. Let's wrap this up.

I don't want this to accidentally be in case you are actually on that treadmill saying, finish it up here, Jordan. By the way, reach out to me. I leave my email and my LinkedIn and the show notes on the podcast. Where do you listen? I want to know. Live stream audience. Let me know too.

But so what's what's our take? What's my take on this? Are we going to achieve super intelligence in a few thousand days, right? Are we going to see it in eight to 13 years, give or take? I don't know. I don't know. I'd say as someone that has been lucky enough to interview this literally the smartest people in the world on AI, right? I brought you all. some amazingly smart people over the last 18 months, you know, 370 episodes. I talk about AI all the time. I think about it, right? And I'm not thinking about it in a reflective way or in a reactive way. I'm constantly thinking about the future of work. I never really go as far as like the future of our human existence. That's not really what I'm, you know, talking about or thinking about.

But now I might, right? Because like everyone else, I wasn't really taking super intelligence, the timeline of it very seriously, because up until 24 hours ago, most of the smartest people in the world said, hey, this is more theoretical, right? The rise in the machines. When AI is creating new AI and repairing itself and doesn't need humans anymore and we can't even, the smartest humans in the world can't even understand the level of intelligence that AI has. time I say that now, I think of the JZ line, right? So I don't know how to feel about this, this concept that a SI could be around the corner because my brain has not fully wrapped itself around this concept of super intelligence. Because, if I'm being honest, I'm a lot of times focused on AGI, artificial general intelligence. Because I think, I personally think,

we're pretty much there, right? The problem is every time that we come out with more powerful AI systems, we essentially keep pushing that goalpost, right? But for this AGI show, I did a couple of weeks ago, I went back and looked at how people defined AGI. Eight years ago, 12 years ago, 15 years ago, right? Internet archives are amazing. And by these definitions from 10 years ago, by every definition,

today we have already achieved AGI, but that's according to definitions from 10, 15 years ago. So I think, if I'm being honest, I think in two to five years, it will probably be undeniable that we've achieved AGI.I. But I'm sure people are still going to keep punting that definition along. And I think the same will hold true with super intelligence, right? In eight to 13 years, right, will we have AI systems,

that are generally better at every single task than humans? I mean, probably, probably y'all, look, this generative AI wave that we've been riding now for 20 months since chat GPT came out, it has exponentially grown faster than the world's smartest experts could have or would have predicted. So I'm not gonna sit here and, you know, you know, say the same about ASI and say, oh, super intelligence, it's fake. It's theoretical.

We'll never get there. So I do think that we are going to make massive steps there. And I do think in those massive leaps and bounds, we're probably just going to go completely step over HGI. And it's probably just going to be at some point in the next five-ish years. Oh, in assumption, right? And I think eventually in the next five years, you're probably going to hear, you know, Sadia Nadella. from Microsoft talk about AI. You're probably going to hear Google talk about ASI, superintelligence. You're probably going to hear, you know, Mark Zuckerberg saying meta is focused on super intelligence.

So I think what's going to happen is companies are just going to start focusing on superintelligence and safe superintelligence, right? Yeah, SSI, shout them out there. So my take is I think that we will be making strides toward super intelligence. intelligence, but I don't know if in my lifetime, if we will actually arrive. Because I think like AGI, super intelligence just might be one of those things. We keep kicking the can and kicking the definition because, okay, Sam Altman, what happens if in a few thousand days, if an eight to 13 years?

What happens if we actually achieve ASI, right? Then what happens with OpenAI? What happens with you personally? Do we just cease to care? Right? Do we stop building? Do we just hand everything over? Or do we all just become kind of like third party auditors to, you know, hey, I'm going to go watch my, my ASI bots, make sure they're doing everything correctly, right?

I'm going to sit up in my rocking chair, sip on my lemonade and make sure my ASI bots are doing, you know, building, you know, building, you know, you know, know, glitter-covered path to prosperity. I don't know. So the quick, hot take, takeaway, I don't think eight to 13 years or a few thousand days. I personally don't see that happening because I see this definition constantly changing. All right. One thing that's not going to constantly change. Everyday AI, we're still going to be here today, tomorrow, and for probably, many hundreds or thousands of days to come, right? Until the ASI take my job. So thank you for tuning in.

If this was helpful, please let me know. We spent so much time putting these shows together. If you think I'm crazy, let me know as well. Get your comments in. Are we going to see super intelligence? Yes or no. And are you going to go sign up for our newsletter? Yes or no.

Please go do that. Your EverydayAI.com. Sign up for the free daily newsletter. Thank you for tuning in. We'll see you back tomorrow. and every day for more everyday AI. Thanks y'all. Meet Firefly AI Assistant.

Now live in Adobe Firefly, the Allman One Creative AI Studio. Just describe what you want to create in your own words, and the assistant handles the rest, orchestrating multi-step workflows across Adobe Creative Cloud apps, including Photoshop, Premiere Express, and more in one conversational interface. You direct the outcome while the assistant accelerates execution. Stand control with the ability to step in and refine at any time. See it today. at firefly.adobie.com.

And that's a wrap for today's edition of Everyday AI. Thanks for joining us. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and leave us a rating. It helps keep us going. For a little more AI magic, visit Your EverydayAI.com and sign up to our daily newsletter so you don't get left behind. Go break some barriers and we'll see you next time.