We have about a year before everything changes, according to Altman

Moore’s Law, named after Gordon E. Moore, co-founder of Intel, states that the number of components on a single chip doubles every two years at minimal cost. It’s not exactly an exact science, but his simple observation of how quickly chip technology was advancing in 1965 has proven quite useful in predicting where technology will be in the coming years.

In his latest blog post, Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, creators of ChatGPT, just stated that “Moore’s Law changed the world at a 2x pace every 18 months; this is incredibly stronger.” Altman was referring to the massive price drop we’ve seen in AI usage. For developers, this is measured in token cost, and the cost per token to use AI has been dropping roughly 10 times every 12 months. Between early 2023 and mid-2024, the price per token to use ChatGPT dropped approximately 150 times.

General AI is coming:

Technically, Altman made a mistake by writing “18 months” instead of “about two years.” The 18-month figure is a common misinterpretation, since there was an independent prediction by Moore’s colleague, Intel executive David House, stating that Moore’s Law would mean chip performance would double every 18 months, without increased power consumption. So, a forgivable slip.

However, Altman’s argument is that the drop in the cost of using AI is another indicator that artificial general intelligence (AGI) is “appearing.” AGI is artificial intelligence that is on par with or more intelligent than human intelligence, and its development is the main reason companies like OpenAI exist, because the benefits of AGI could truly change the world, despite the dangers we keep being warned about.

It’s worth reading Sam Altman’s full blog post because it feels like a warning that the future is coming sooner than we think and that we really need to start preparing for how the world is going to change.

Altman’s predictions are certainly mind-blowing. His three key predictions for the near future are:

• Scientific progress will likely be much faster than today.
• The price of many goods will eventually drop dramatically.
• The price of luxury goods and some inherently limited resources, like land, may rise even more dramatically.

Altman doesn’t predict these changes will occur in 2025, but since he has already publicly said that humanity will reach AGI this year, the changes seem just around the corner.

His message is also that we have some tough decisions ahead regarding AGI and how freely it should be used, because one possible future “we can see is that AI is used by authoritarian governments to control their population through mass surveillance and loss of autonomy.”

In Altman’s view, ensuring that the benefits of AGI are widely distributed is essential to prevent this from happening.

He ends with a rather surprising prediction: “Anyone in 2035 should be able to harness the equivalent intellectual capacity of any person in 2025; everyone should have access to unlimited genius to direct anything they can imagine.”

It’s hard to know how to process the scope of Altman’s vision right now. Companies like OpenAI are committed to developing artificial general intelligence, but Altman urges us to start considering and discussing the inherent dangers of who controls this technology—right now.

4ovision right now. Companies like OpenAI are committed to developing artificial general intelligence, but Altman urges us to start considering and discussing the inherent dangers of who controls this technology—right now.