AI responds to ChatGPT CEO's warning that the tech will surpass humans by 2030

Sam Altman’s major prediction about when AI will surpass human intelligence has been responded to – by AI itself.

The ChatGPT creator and OpenAI CEO has always been open about his fears for the future when it comes to his own projects.

However, it has yet to have been scrutinized by his very invention, until now.

Altman, who recently admitted to using ChatGPT to help raise his newborn son, has joined the likes of tech CEO Dario Amodei, and the ‘AI godfather’ in spilling his thoughts on how AI could become an issue to humanity, and soon.

Speaking with Die Welt last year, Altman confided in the German publication that he would be ‘surprised’ if by 2030, 'we don’t have extraordinarily capable models that do things that we ourselves cannot do'.

Sam Altman explained his 2030 prediction (Photo by Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu via Getty Images)

That’s because he said his latest AI model creation is already smarter than he is, adding:

“In another couple of years, it will become very plausible for AI to make, for example, scientific discoveries that humans cannot make on their own. To me, that’ll start to feel like something we could properly call superintelligence.”

However, ChatGPT had a few things to say about this, particularly when defining what Altman meant by ‘superintelligence’.

Calling his predictions ‘plausible in some areas’ and ‘overstated in others’, the chatbot revealed it all comes down to ‘what people mean by “superintelligence.”’

While agreeing that AI has advanced significantly in the last few years, the artificial intelligence bot went on to say that it’s not ‘unreasonable’ of Altman to define future AI as something completely shocking to what we know right now.

However, it then said there is some nuance around the argument, specifically in three areas when considering what humans can and cannot figure out on their own.

AI responded to Altman (Getty Stock Images)

AI accelerating human science: which is happening now and helping humans discover things they couldn’t have before.

“AI helps with protein folding, materials discovery, code generation, literature review, hypothesis ranking, and experiment design,” it said.

AI making discoveries humans wouldn’t have found so soon: “This also seems plausible within a few years. Humans plus AI systems may outperform humans alone dramatically,” said the AI.

AI producing knowledge that humans cannot even understand: “This is the strongest interpretation of ‘superintelligence’, and we are nowhere near proving that,” it added.

Essentially, it revealed that AI is largely capable of data analytics and pattern recognition rather than being a reasoning and self-improving robotics formula with the ability to remember and innovate.

However, it did share that it one day could become a powerful tool in sciences like cancer research, except it would take years of biological research to achieve.

In the end, the chatbot said while Altman is almost right, the distinction of what ‘superintelligent’ really means in the grand scale of things, hinges on whether his prediction of AI surpassing humans by 2030 is correct or not.