University of Kwazulu-Natal

Sam Altman Predicts The Singularity Are We Ready For Ai To Surpass

Bonisiwe Shabane
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sam altman predicts the singularity are we ready for ai to surpass

In his 2005 book "The Singularity is Near," the futurist Ray Kurzweil predicted that the Singularity -- the moment in which machine intelligence surpasses our own -- would occur around the year 2045. Sam Altman believes it's much closer. In a blog post published Tuesday, the OpenAI CEO delivered a homily devoted to what he views as the imminent arrival of artificial "superintelligence." Whereas artificial general intelligence, or AGI, is usually defined as... (Disclosure: Ziff Davis, ZDNET's parent company, filed an April 2025 lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging it infringed Ziff Davis copyrights in training and operating its AI systems.) Crucially, the blog post frames this supposedly inevitable arrival of superintelligent AI as one that will happen gradually enough for society to prepare itself. By comparison, he looks back at the past five years, a relatively short period of time in which most people have gone from knowing nothing about AI to using powerful tools like ChatGPT on...

Also: Forget AGI - Meta is going after 'superintelligence' now Sam Altman has made his boldest prediction yet about when AI will surpass human intelligence. Altman, always the AI optimist, has previously touted AI’s potential to someday outthink humans, but the technology’s past three years of progress since OpenAI kicked off the AI arms race with ChatGPT’s release have... “I would certainly say that by the end of this decade, by 2030, if we don’t have extraordinarily capable models that do things that we ourselves cannot do, I’d be very surprised,” he said... The company’s newest AI model is already smarter than he is, Altman added, and the future looks even more optimistic. While AI may still not be able to do some things humans can do easily, models developed as soon as 2026 could be “quite surprising,” and progress rapidly, Altman said.

OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman believes humanity may have already crossed a technological Rubicon. In a late-Wednesday blog post, Altman argued that artificial intelligence systems such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT now outperform humans in key domains, marking a “take-off” moment many technologists refer to as the singularity. “We are past the event horizon; the take-off has started,” Altman wrote. Yet, he added, “so far it’s much less weird than it seems like it should be.” Altman’s essay strikes a paradoxical tone: AI is more powerful than ever, yet the world still looks reassuringly familiar. “Robots are not yet walking the streets, nor are most of us talking to AI all day,” he noted.

Everyday realities—disease, the cost of space travel, unanswered scientific questions—remain stubbornly unchanged. Nevertheless, Altman insists that current systems are “smarter than people in many ways.” Hundreds of millions of users rely on chatbots for coding, research and content generation, he wrote, meaning that even “a small... Looking ahead, Altman forecasts an accelerated timetable: “Robots are not yet on the streets, and most of us don’t talk to AI all day long. People are still dying from disease, we can’t easily go into space, and there are still many things in the universe that we don’t understand. However, we have recently built systems that are smarter than humans in many ways, and that can significantly amplify the output of those who use them.

The hardest part is over; the scientific breakthroughs that have brought us to systems like GPT-4 and o3 have not come easily, but they will take us even further.” On June 11, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman wrote in an article published on his personal website. According to him, humanity may have entered the early stages of the "singularity" - the tipping point where artificial intelligence surpasses human intelligence. Altman said humanity has crossed a critical turning point, an "event horizon" that marks the beginning of a new era of digital superintelligence. “We have crossed this event horizon, and takeoff has begun,” he wrote. “Humanity is close to creating digital superintelligence, and so far it is not as weird as imagined.”

Altman’s comments come as leading developers in the field of artificial intelligence are warning that artificial general intelligence (AGI) could soon replace many jobs and disrupt the global economy at a pace that even... Get the latest updates delivered to your inbox every day, and stay up-to-date for free 🧠📈 Get the latest updates delivered to your inbox every day, and stay up-to-date for free 🧠📈 Sam Altman says the Singularity is imminent - here's why In a new blog post, Altman laid out his vision for a hugely prosperous future powered by superintelligent AI. We'll figure things out as we go along, he argues.

In his 2005 book "The Singularity is Near," the futurist Ray Kurzweil predicted that the Singularity -- the moment in which machine intelligence surpasses our own -- would occur around the year 2045. Sam Altman believes it's much closer. In a blog post published Tuesday, the OpenAI CEO delivered a homily devoted to what he views as the imminent arrival of artificial "superintelligence." Whereas artificial general intelligence, or AGI, is usually defined as... (Disclosure: Ziff Davis, ZDNET's parent company, filed an April 2025 lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging it infringed Ziff Davis copyrights in training and operating its AI systems.) Crucially, the blog post frames this supposedly inevitable... By comparison, he looks back at the past five years, a relatively short period of time in which most people have gone from knowing nothing about AI to using powerful tools like ChatGPT on... Also: Forget AGI - Meta is going after 'superintelligence' now "Humanity is close to building digital superintelligence, and at least so far it's much less weird than it seems like it should be," Altman...

His writing veers at times into quasi-religious territory, portraying the arrival of superintelligent AI in terms reminiscent of early Christian prophets describing the Second Coming. While his language is cloaked in scientific, secular language, it's hard not to detect just a hint of proselytizing: "the 2030s are likely going to be wildly different from any time that has come... "We do not know how far beyond human-level intelligence we can go, but we are about to find out." AGI -- and by extension, artificial superintelligence -- has been a divisive subject in the... Like Altman, many believe its arrival is not a matter of if, but when. Meta is reportedly preparing to launch an internal research lab devoted to building superintelligence. Others doubt that it's even technically possible to build a machine that's more advanced than the human brain.

OpenAI catapulted to global fame following its release of ChatGPT in late 2022. The company, since then, has been shipping new AI products at a breakneck pace, prompting a steady trickle of employees to depart, citing concerns that safety was being deprioritized in the name of speed. Many have joined Anthropic, an AI company that was actually founded by former OpenAI employees, or have gone on to launch their own ventures. Ilya Sutskever, for example -- a cofounder of OpenAI and its former chief scientist -- founded a company called Safe Superintelligence (SSI) last June. AI developers in general have also been widely criticized for their rush to automate human labor without offering any kind of concrete policy proposals for what millions of job-displaced people in the future ought... Altman's new blog post echoes a refrain that's become common among tech leaders on this front: Yes, there will be some job losses, but ultimately the technology will create entirely new categories of jobs...

(Just exactly what those things are is never made quite clear.) Altman has also supported the idea of implementing a universal basic income to support the masses as the world adjusts to his vision... Also: What AI pioneer Yoshua Bengio is doing next to make AI safer "The rate of technological progress will keep accelerating, and it will continue to be the case that people are capable of... "There will be very hard parts like whole classes of jobs going away, but on the other hand the world will be getting so much richer so quickly that we'll be able to seriously... It began as a nonprofit, aimed -- as its name suggests -- at open-source AI research. It's since become a profit-raising behemoth competing with the likes of Google and Meta. The company's mission statement has long been "to ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity." Now, judging from Altman's blog post, OpenAI seems to be aiming for an even loftier goal: "before...

Sam Altman's outrageous 'Singularity' blog perfectly sums up AI in 2025 A critical zero-day attack is actively targeting WatchGuard Firebox firewalls, exposing thousands of organisations worldwide. Australian cyber authorities have issued an urgent alert, warning the flaw enables remote takeover of network devices, with more than 115,000 systems still exposed online. AI image models are no longer competing on visual flair alone. As OpenAI’s GPT Image 1.5 responds to Google’s Nano Banana Pro, the contest shifts to control, safety and who shapes the visual record online, raising new stakes for creators, platforms and public trust. Melbourne-based fleet management firm Netstar Australia has been hit by the Blackshrantac ransomware group in a data extortion attack, underscoring rising cyber risks in the telematics sector that handles sensitive GPS data for government...

Humanity stands at a defining juncture as artificial intelligence (AI) quietly transforms society into something unprecedented. Earlier this month, Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, made a landmark announcement: humanity has crossed an "event horizon"—the irreversible threshold toward digital superintelligence. Altman outlined this vision in his blog post, "The Gentle Singularity," which quickly drew global debate across the tech world and policy circles. The singularity refers to the moment AI surpasses human intelligence, triggering rapid, unpredictable shifts in society. Using the astrophysical term "event horizon," Altman emphasizes that humanity has reached a point of no return, marking the start of what he sees as a controlled and gradual transition rather than an explosive... Artificial intelligence may have crossed a technological threshold popularly known as “Singularity,” according to one expert who says we have surpassed the point where machines merely assist us, with intelligent machines now exceeding human...

The claims were made by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, who in a recent blog post wrote that AI is already demonstrating intelligence that goes beyond what humans can do naturally, but that for now,... “We are past the event horizon; the takeoff has started,” Altman wrote. “Humanity is close to building digital superintelligence, and at least so far it’s much less weird than it seems like it should be.” For decades, futurists have predicted the arrival of a point where technological advancements would reach a point of no return, potentially instigating a transformation of human civilization. Popularly known as the “Singularity,” definitions may vary, although most visions of this technological event horizon have one thing in common: the rise of artificial intelligence. Only a few years ago, the idea that AI could mimic the most demanding human tasks would have seemed like a remote, futuristic possibility.

However, that has all changed with the rise of chatbots like ChatGPT and others, which are increasingly pushing the boundaries of machine intelligence into unforeseen territory.

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