Sam Altman has made possible his boldest prediction yet about when AI will surpass human intelligence.<\/p>\n
Altman, always the AI optimist, has previously touted AI\u2019s potential to someday outthink humans, but the technology\u2019s past years of progress since OpenAI kicked off the AI arms race with ChatGPT\u2019s release have shown him this moment could come sooner rather than later.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI would certainly say that by the end of this decade, by 2030, if we don\u2019t have extraordinarily capable models that do things that we ourselves cannot do, I\u2019d be very surprised,\u201d he said in an interview<\/a> with German newspaper Die Welt in late 2025.<\/p>\n The future looks even more optimistic, Altman added.<\/p>\n While AI may still not be able to do some things humans can do easily, models developed as soon as this year could be \u201cquite surprising,\u201d and progress rapidly, Altman said.<\/p>\n \u201cI can easily imagine a world where 30% to 40% of the tasks that happen in the economy today get done by AI in the not very distant future,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n Altman\u2019s prediction is slightly less optimistic than that of other AI researchers and CEOs who have said the tech will make significant progress in just a couple of years. Former OpenAI employee and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei stands out for his belief that AI will beat out humans \u201cin almost everything<\/a>\u201d by 2027. Newly minted trillionaire Elon Musk, who is known for his rosy predictions, said in a video just after SpaceX\u2019s IPO this month that AI and robots will create so many goods that, \u201cmoney will stop being relevant at some point in the future,\u201d he said<\/a>.<\/p>\n Yet Altman noted that humans, despite the capacity of high-powered technology, will always care about what other humans are doing.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI think these qualities will be increasingly important in the world of AI,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019ll have an incredible tool at our disposal, but we still have to figure out what to do, what other people want, and what other people will find useful.\u201d<\/p>\n Pushing the limits<\/p>\n To be sure, as the fifth most popular website in the world, according to Altman<\/a>, ChatGPT is already limited by the large amounts of energy and massive data centers it needs to operate. Altman previously said the company has built models more advanced than GPT-5, but can\u2019t release <\/a>them publicly because it doesn\u2019t have the appropriate infrastructure.\u00a0<\/p>\n