Sam Altman has spent years preparing the world for artificial intelligence that surpasses humans, a threshold known as the “singularity.” Now, the OpenAI CEO says the moment has arrived, but he claims it doesn’t spell the end of the world.
A decade ago, Altman said, superintelligent AI felt like a distant dream, something he and his colleagues discussed around the lunch table without expecting to see it themselves. That has changed rapidly as AI development has accelerated.
“We are now, like, in the singularity,” Altman said in an interview on the Relentless podcast published over the weekend. “This is the moment.”
It’s easy to see why he might have a point. Last week, an agent powered by two OpenAI models broke out of a testing environment called a “sandbox,” got internet access, and attacked open source AI platform Hugging Face to try to cheat on an internal evaluation.
While some labeled the incident a marketing stunt, it sparked panic among those who fear advanced AI could someday threaten humanity.
