OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has revealed in one of his latest interviews that his company managed to attract almost all of the highly capable AI researchers who believed that achieving artificial general intelligence (AGI) was possible.
According to Times Now, Altman spoke with Cory Levy at Internapalooza, an event associated with Z Fellows.
Altman said that nearly 50 researchers worldwide were both highly skilled and convinced that AGI could eventually be built.
As per the 41-year-old, nearly 45 of these researchers ended up at OpenAI.
The OpenAI CEO also suggested that the company’s willingness to pursue an idea that many people considered unrealistic helped bring together researchers who shared the same long-term vision.
‘Everyone thought the bet was absurd’
The tech mogul said the early belief in AGI was not widely accepted within the tech and research community.
He argued that many people were unwilling to seriously consider how far the AI models could eventually go.
Altman said, “No one wanted to contend with, like, maybe we can scale this up a billion X, and if it costs a trillion dollars, that's fine.”
He noted that the possibility of creating superintelligence was another idea that many researchers were not sure about, adding, “And maybe we really can make superintelligence, and that'd be weird, but, you know, maybe it's possible.”
Researchers also had to consider whether alignment could eventually be solved even though there was no clear answer at the time.
“And maybe we can solve the alignment problem even though we don't know how,” he said.
Altman said many people instead viewed the idea of building AGI as irresponsible or unrealistic. He recalled the reaction as being along the lines of, “there's no way. This is irresponsible. These are like dumb kids. It's never gonna happen.”
Today, AGI remains a major focus of the AI industry, with companies investing heavily in increasingly capable models and infrastructure.
However, there is still no universally accepted definition of AGI or agreement on when, or whether, it will be achieved.
