cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/47387000
Sam Altman says OpenAI wants to sell intelligence like a utility
During a recent appearance at BlackRock in Washington, D.C., OpenAI’s Sam Altman, shared his vision for the future of AI. At one point saying, “We see a future where intelligence is a utility, like electricity or water, and people buy it from us on a meter.”
Altman was describing a world where AI becomes a foundational infrastructure, something woven into everyday life so deeply that consumers and businesses simply “plug into” it the same way they rely on electricity, Wi-Fi or running water.
Me, tons, both as part of both of my day jobs, and in my free time I’m building startups, all powered by claude code. I’m building tons faster and accomplishing more outcomes than ever before in my 20+ year career in tech. AMA
What’s your long-term business plan for when Anthropic starts charging per token, at a rate that actually reflects their costs?
My businesses don’t depend on Anthropic, so that doesn’t worry me at all - I’m using Claude code as my daily driver when I’m building software just because after trying a bunch of options it has consistently made me more productive than anything else over the last 9 months. Every month or so I try the latest open weight models which I can run locally, when they get good enough for me to have an acceptable productive dev experience fully offline locally I’ll be very happy. Gemma 4 is already a major step forwards there and I’ve used it for some small local hobby projects, but I still get much more done when I’m working on large complex code projects if I use Claude code. If they removed their $200/month subscription and stopped subsidizing compute, I’d likely switch to another tool/chase whoever else is burning VC money for a bit, while accelerating my adoption of local models, accepting lower productivity.
We’re good, thanks.
Are you the asshole?
Nah, I’m just moving with the times in an industry which didn’t give me much choice - was laid off twice and the contract roles I ended up managing to get were companies who were already heavily using and expecting usage of AI. Tbh though I see it like the early days of the internet - and while I’m not a fan of big tech, wish the US was less corrupt and wish capitalism wasn’t so rampant, at this point IMO the cat is very much out of the bag and the industry has moved on - at least where I am right now. I’d imagine if I move back to Britain the usage/attitudes towards AI are probably pretty different
Yes. The early days of the Internet when workers famously had to be threatened to use the Internet for their work or they’d be fired. The early days of the Internet where the public had to cajoled into using the Internet by cramming it into everything just so the early Internet companies could inflate user count statistics.
Yes, the parallels are very strong!
I guess we have different memories of that era, I remember a lot of people moaning about everything going online, businesses feeling the pressure to set up websites, people being shut out of services if they didn’t get with the times and get an internet connection, etc.
Same shit, different tech. It’s just the brutal march of tech under late stage capitalism, my opinion is that you can’t change it, you can only decide whether you’ll ride the wave and move with the times or bury your head in the sand and hope it blows over. Tbh I did the latter for the first few years but once I realised the job I’d done for decades was basically no longer a job, I realised I had to just suck it up and move with the times 🤷
I have memories of people sneaking some form of Internet connection into the workplace against the rules of corporate IT. I have memories of young people arguing with their (older) bosses that the Internet was the future and bosses pushing back and banning it. I have memories of people being eager to get hooked up to the Internet at home; people actively looking to find an ISP that would allow another sign-up (because most of them were saturated at the time).
I also have memories of how every new user on the Internet increased the profitability of the Internet sphere as a whole instead of, you know—like with modern AI—each new user being a further drain.
So yes, we have different memories. Mine just happen to line up with facts.
Lol! Maybe stop grinding the slop machine then?
Not sure what you mean, I don’t work for big tech and never have. I’m not churning out slop, I’m building products which work, still maintaining the quality standards I always have - in fact I feel like I’m about to raise the bar much more easily now, I can build a thorough test suite which covers the whole test pyramid way faster than ever before which means most of my code is more thoroughly tested now
What’s your favorite project you’re building and what is the biggest market you are targeting?
Well realistically my favourite product is my most recent passion project, which is my karaoke generator platform https://nomadkaraoke.com/
It makes people happy every day, and I get the superpower of being able to let guests at my weekly karaoke night sing literally anything they want (cos I can generate it on the night so they can sing a good quality karaoke version of it even if it’s a super niche song)
Okay I like this one too!
Go and touch some grass…
I don’t think that’s a question 😅 I work on my garden at the weekends and cycle a bunch thanks - I don’t have (or want) kids so I have a bit more free energy to build stuff without sacrificing my work/life balance too much compared to most folks my age
Why do you end your post with AMA (presumably “Ask Me Anything”) and then promptly ignore the questions?
Entertainment (also realistically I’m just super busy, I don’t really use social media and only check this kinda app once a day when I’m winding down)