AI models mostly smarter than top scientists, OpenAI's Altman says

CEO says AI models capable of performing white-collar work but people must 'remain in control of the future'

Advanced artificial intelligence (AI) models have progressed to become mostly smarter than the brightest scientists and capable of performing significant portions of white-collar work, OpenAI Chief Executive Sam Altman said on Monday.

Speaking at the opening ceremony of the Abu Dhabi International Petroleum Exhibition and Conference in the United Arab Emirates, Altman highlighted the dramatic leap in AI capabilities over the past year. "At the start of this year, AI was mostly not as smart as our smartest scientist, and now it's mostly smarter than them," Altman said.

"AI was mostly not able to do a lot of white-collar jobs, and now it mostly can do a lot of parts of that," he added.

Altman stressed that despite the disruptive impact on global economies and employment, human judgement, creativity and accountability must remain central to the technology's deployment. "We think it is absolutely critical that people remain in control of the future; there should not be a handoff to AI, there should not be a gradual 'we are going to let AI decide what is best for us,'" he said.

"AI needs to be a tool built for people and needs to serve people, not the other way around," Altman noted.

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Addressing concerns surrounding the massive electricity demands of computing infrastructure, he described physical power supply as the single biggest bottleneck for the sector. "Everything else we're going to make huge progress on, except atoms are still atoms and the physical world that has to power this is going to be the dominant factor of the cost and the abundance," he said.

Altman also noted that global per capita token consumption has surged from near zero six years ago to roughly 100,000 tokens a month, while top institutional users consume about 500 billion tokens monthly.

Highlighting the host nation's rapid adoption of technology, he pointed out that around 80% of young people in the UAE use ChatGPT on a weekly basis.

During the event, OpenAI announced partnerships with Emirati technology group G42 and state oil producer Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, marking the first global deployment of OpenAI's frontier models by an energy company.