Sam Altman says people may someday “buy intelligence on a meter” like electricity or water and critics say the vision sounds more dystopian than innovative.

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.

  • luciferofastora@feddit.org
    1·
    3日前

    I think this is one of those cases where what seems like an overarching strategy is just an emerging result of a series of ad-hoc decisions.

    I don’t think Altman and his ilk explicitly want to submit people to the system. I believe he genuinely just wants to extort profits with reckless disregard for side effects. The dependency would be intentional, but his motive would be money.

    He probably isn’t fundamentally opposed to individual thought either. It’s just that he can’t profit from it. He’d be happy to have you rent freedom from him if he found a way to control it. Individuality Deluxe - now available as family bundle for the low price of two median child salaries!

    Of course, he’d also sell the reigns of his machine to governments, again for money. An authoritarian government is more likely to buy it and help expand his market reach (because they also want that dependency on something they control), so he will back any political movement that aligns with his ambition to make more money.

    I don’t think he’s a Nazi because of any political convictions or ambitions. He’s a Nazi because the profit estimates look good.