Altman Says AGI Coming Faster Than We Think

Today on the AI Daily Brief, AGI might be here sooner than we think, and 300 million people are now using ChatGPT every week. Before then in the headlines Google CEO seems to acknowledge the AI slowdown the AI Daily Brief is a daily podcast and video about the most important news and discussions in AI. To join the conversation, follow the Discord link in our show. Notes. Welcome back to the AI Daily Brief Headlines edition. All the daily AI news you need in around five minutes. One of the things that we have been keeping an eye on recently is whether the idea that there is a slowdown or a plateau in AI capabilities actually has legs well. In a recent interview, Google CEO Sundar Pichai seems to give some credence to that. Talking about the company's AI research efforts, Pichai said, the low hanging fruit is gone, the hill is steeper, the information continues. Pichai said models would continue to get better at completing a sequence of actions which would help with automating software tasks, but quote unquote, deeper breakthroughs would be needed for more dramatic improvements. This is certainly the theme that we've been hearing from lots of different folks, and of course we've covered a number of the different approaches to scaling that organizations are now experimenting with. I was given context earlier today, though, for why none of this particularly freaks me out or makes me think that anyone can really rest on their laurels. Dan Schipper from Every Tweeted this morning. Here's the most compelling benchmark of AI progress. A task that took 60 minutes a year ago now takes 60 seconds. In January 2024, Jeffrey Litt and I spent an hour coaxing ChatGPT and Replit to build a live app on my podcast. Twelve months later, Steve Rouse and I built the same app with one prompt in less than a minute. Now keep in mind, building an app live with ChatGPT and REPL it in an hour was a very impressive thing. It still is a very impressive thing. So the fact that a year later, less than a year later, really, that same app is getting built in a single prompt shows just how much we have to get out of the current state of the art. Staying on the Google theme for a minute. One of that company's big breakout AI products for this year is of course, NotebookLM. Really interesting collaboration on that front. Spotify and NotebookLM are embedding a personalized AI podcast as part of Spotify's annual Wrapped feature. RAPT is Spotify's summary of your personal listening habits, and this year they included a podcast version of the recap built of course, with Google's Notebook LM very smart partnership for not only providing a cool alternative interface for Wrapped, which is an extremely popular feature, but also for exposing more people to NotebookLM. Speaking of NotebookLM, some of the people involved with that feature are using the momentum to do something different. Three core members of the team have left the company to strike it out on their own. Team leader Risa Martin, along with designer Jason Spielman and engineer Steven Hughes, have resigned to found a new stealth startup. In a LinkedIn post, Martin said that each of the three quote, have always wanted to be part of a startup and we couldn't shake the feeling that there's a massive opportunity to build something transformative in the space. At this stage we just have an empty website at we're building AI. But Martin did hint at another app layer project, stating as the frontier models and their capabilities continue to grow, thoughtful products are required to make the benefits of this technology accessible, useful and obvious to everyday people. So our team is going to be focused on building a user first AI product. She said. The company is in its earliest stages and has not announced any funding yet, although you have to think given how successful Notebook has been, that funding will not be an issue for this particular startup. One More from Google Land really dominating this headline section today, Google DeepMind has unveiled their world model called Genie 2. In an announcement thread, team lead Jack Parker holder said introducing Genie 2, our most capable large scale foundation world model which can generate a diverse array of consistent worlds playable for up to a minute. We believe Genie 2 could unlock the next wave of capabilities for embodied agents. Basically, the tech promises to deliver consistent environments with simulated dynamics playable with a mouse and keyboard. Parker Holder also showcased the idea of embodied agents or AI controlled avatars that can navigate the generated worlds. He said that the combination of technologies could be used as a quote, path to unlimited environments for training and evaluating our embodied agents. Now this is a huge theme that we're seeing more and more. Earlier this week we saw what Fei Fei Li's World Labs has been working on with their own world model that can generate a 3D environment based on a single image. DeepMind's model works in the same way, but seems to have focused much more on video game style features. In a blog post they wrote, Genie 2 responds intelligently to actions taken by pressing keys on a keyboard, identifying the character and moving it correctly. For example, our model can figure out that arrow keys should move a robot and not trees or clouds. The Genie 1 model had been an extremely narrow experiment focused only on generating 2D worlds. DeepMind said this model was a significant leap forward in generality, adding Genie 2 is a world model, meaning it can simulate virtual worlds, including the consequences of taking any action. It was trained on a large scale video data set and like other generative models, demonstrates various emerging capabilities at scale such as object interactions, complex character animation, physics, and the ability to model and thus predict the behavior of agents. I think for the Long Reads episode this weekend we might get a little bit deeper into these world models, so keep an eye out for that lastly, today Meta is getting in on the nuclear game, joining Amazon, Microsoft and Google. Meta announced a request for proposals to suit their nuclear ambitions. The company is seeking nuclear energy developers who can deploy between 1 and 4 gigawatts of capacity in the U.S. the new generation would be used to power Meta's AI data centers, but also had a strong green energy angle. Meta supporting the development of clean energy must continue to be a priority as electric grids expand to accommodate growing energy needs. At Meta, we believe nuclear energy will play a pivotal role in the transition to cleaner, more reliable and diversified electric grid. They are looking to establish the new supply by the early 2000 and 30s. The timeline is a little tight, with construction of the last new nuclear facility to be built running seven years over. Then again, Meta is pretty flexible on the details. The new power plant could be built anywhere rather than needing to hook up to an existing data center. And with a string of regulatory hiccups delaying Big Tech's nuclear ambitions, this proposal could open up a new avenue. As well as being a casting call for nuclear developers, the proposal could entice states to offer a regulatory fast track to attract new infrastructure. Separately, Meta announced plans to build a supercluster in Louisiana. In a post on Threads, the company wrote today, in partnership with Louisiana Economic Development, we announced our plans for the newest and largest data center in Richland Parish, Louisiana, which will play a vital role in accelerating our AI progress and support training Future open source LLMs. The state's governor announced the project for the budget will be $10 billion, with construction to commence this month and continue through to 2030. But that is going to do it for today's AI Daily Brief headlines edition. Next up, the main episode. Today's episode is brought to you by Plum. Want to use AI to automate your work, but don't know where to start? Plum lets you create AI workflows by simply describing what you want. No coding or API keys required. Imagine typing out AI, analyze my Zoom meetings and send me your insights in notion and watching it come to life before your eyes. 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We've got some great stuff to share. Hope you enjoy. Merry Christmas. I'll come back in a minute to what people think might be coming from that, but where I actually want to start is with a really interesting conversation between Sam Altman and Andrew Ross Sorkin at the New York Times DealBook Summit yesterday. There were a bunch of really fascinating parts of the conversation, including some new numbers for ChatGPT revealed, as well as maybe the most notable part, which is how Altman thinks about the coming of AGI. The TLDR is that Altman thinks that AGI is coming a lot faster than we think, but maybe less impactful than we think, he said. My guess is we will hit AGI sooner than most people in the world think and it matters much less. AGI can get built. The world mostly goes on in mostly the same way the economy grows faster. But then there is a long continuation from what we call AGI to what we call superintelligence. Last month, Altman said he believes his company will achieve AGI next year, and these comments suggest he thinks OpenAI is still on course. The big question though, is how exactly does OpenAI and Altman define AGI? An early version of the company charter said AGI would be able to automate the great majority of intellectual labor. Now it seems that the definition is a little fuzzier and somewhat less One of the reasons this matters is that OpenAI can end their deal with Microsoft once their board declares that AGI has been achieved. The Verge recently reported that the goal seems to be to combine the forthcoming Orion or GPT5 model with the O1 reasoning model to create a more powerful model that can be labeled AGI, adding more credence to the idea that Altman's definition of AGI is now more modest. He added, I expect the economic disruption to take a little longer than people think because there's a lot of inertia in society. So in the first couple of years maybe not that much changes and then maybe a lot changes in the economy. It may be that the civilization changing AI which can end the need for human work, is what Altman has been referring to now as superintelligence. Altman wrote back in September that superintelligence could be achieved within a few thousand days, a much less certain timeline. And notably, while Altman was optimistic that they're close. He did not give the impression that OpenAI has AGI waiting in the wings, almost ready to deploy, he said. There's a ton of hard work, a ton of research and engineering still to do, but I think it's possible the other big topic from the interview was the prospect of political retribution from Elon Musk. So far, Musk has been fighting OpenAI in the courts, but there's a growing concern that he will use his newly found political influence to stifle Altman's plans. Discussing the prospect that Musk could send the force of the government against OpenAI, Altman said, I believe pretty strongly that Elon will do the right thing and that it would be profoundly unamerican to use political power to the degree that Elon would hurt competitors and advantage his own businesses. I don't think people will tolerate that and I don't think Elon would do it. Altman also remarked that he was, quote, tremendously sad about the simmering tension between the pair of one time co founders, commenting, I grew up with Elon as like a mega hero. I thought what Elon was doing was absolutely incredible for the world at a time when most of the world was not thinking very ambitiously. He pushed a lot of people, me included, to think much more ambitiously and I have different feelings about him now, but I'm glad he exists. Reflecting on what is driving Elon to go after OpenAI in this way, Altman seems to think it's purely about business rivalry, adding, he really cares about being the guy. He's a competitor and we're doing well. There was also a lengthy discussion about the conversion of OpenAI into a for profit company. Altman confirmed that the decision was made in part because Musk caught off funding, but didn't elaborate on the events that led to the situation. He denied reports that OpenAI had sought to block investors from also investing in rival companies. Altman also discussed his lack of equity in the company, stating, I wish I had taken some, given how big all of this is, it almost passed without notice that ChatGPT usage has exploded. Altman claimed that the platform now sees 300 million weekly active users, basically the equivalent of a major portion of the entire United states is using ChatGPT every week. They're sending a billion messages daily, and 1.3 million developers in the US alone are building on the platform. In the context of the abnormally fast scaling, Altman noted that the company requires far more compute than they had projected, and on the rumors that the relationship with Microsoft had become Frosty. He admitted to some tension, but said that the two companies were still pretty aligned on their incentives and are not in the middle of disentangling. One other interesting story around OpenAI that isn't about their Shipmas, which is where we'll end this episode. The company has signed a partnership with Anduril Industries to build anti drone defense Systems. This is OpenAI's first time working with a commercial weapons manufacturer, and comes a month after they first signaled their newfound willingness to work on military tech. The company still prohibits the use of its technology on offensive weapons, but has become increasingly comfortable contracting with the Defense Department on cybersecurity and administrative work. The current crop of Silicon Valley startups is undeniably more willing to view tech as an integral part of national defense and something they should be taking an active role in. Last month, Anthropic signed a deal with Palantir to provide their models for classified document analysis. Anduril's anti drone systems are designed to track unmanned aircraft and then shut them down using electronic jamming, response drones or other means. Anduril said that OpenAI's tech could improve accuracy and reduce the time to detection and response, putting fewer people in harm's way. Pretty interesting one that I think says a lot about the shifting mood of Silicon Valley. Lastly, let's talk about 12 days of shipments. An announcement tweet promised 12 daily livestreams and a bunch of new things, big and small. The Verge reported that the stocking stuffers will include an assortment of new features, products and demos. And sources say that the big reveals will be a new reasoning model and the long awaited release of the text to video model Sora. It seems that some Shipmas cheer will also be brought to the company's existing products. AI news aggregator B Tibor found code enabling a new Christmas edition voice for ChatGPT, complete with a snowflake symbol to activate voice mode. Tibor is referring to it as Santa GPT, so perhaps you'll be able to chat with OpenAI's version of Jolly Old Saint Nick. For what it's worth, this is something that I have already done with my kids asking one of ChatGPT's existing voices to imitate Santa to announce as we turned on our holiday lights. Overall, the team at OpenAI seems to be very excited about this, chief Product Officer Kevin Weil tweeted. This is going to be wild and crazy and a lot of fun. Shipmas is coming, investor Vinod Khosla wrote. Excited for OpenAI's 12 Days of Shipmas, the AI world will again feel different by the new year. We of course got a bunch of predictions, data scientist Diego wrote. Day 1 Launch of Sora Day 2 Introduction of Asana inspired voice for ChatGPT Day 3 Enhancement of ChatGPT's advanced voice mode with Vision and then he went on to make a bunch of predictions as well. One small one which would be big would be a new Dall E model. To the extent that there is any skepticism, it's that some think that if the announcements aren't really big, this is all going to feel like a bit of a wet blanket. Lisano Gabe writes, I think I'm speaking for most AI nerds when I say if OpenAI doesn't release GPT 4.5 or demo GPT 5, this 12 day event will be a huge waste of time and could really screw OpenAI's public perception. We already know that Sora01 price cuts in AVM are coming because you promised us months ago. Give us a Christmas surprise or pack your stuff if you make all this hype and don't deliver. I think as an investor I would rather bet my chips on Claude, Gemini, Grok, Deep Seek and Quen. For my part, I do not think we're going to see GPT 4.5 or GPT 5. Allman has been pretty clear that that is not coming this year. However, I think a lot of people will be pretty excited if SORA actually comes to bear. And as for the rest of it, well, we'll just have to wait and see. For now though, that is going to do it for today's AI Daily Brief. Until next time, PE.