Sam Altman declares ‘singularity now,’ slams rivals’ ‘terrifying’ AI future: Here’s why

OpenAI boss Sam Altman has declared that humanity has entered a point where artificial intelligence has overcome it with the Singularity now.”

Altman’s latest remarks come amid the growing AI hacking concerns.

Altman, while appearing on the latest drop of the podcast Relentless on Saturday, July 25, declared, “We’re now like in the singularity.”

For the unversed, the singularity’ is often referred to as the point at which AI outpaces human intelligence and begins advancing at rapid pace that was hardly imaginable before for humanity.

Altman while drawing a parallel to the decade past, maintained that the so-called singularity is still a distant and unlikely dream.

“Now we’re actually in the moment that we used to talk about at the lunch table in a very not-serious way,” he said.

“I’ve been waiting for this my whole life, and I think it’s going to be incredible, hugely positive, awesome for the world,” Altman continued.

Altman, while continuing to discuss ‘singularity’ in the podcast, also took a jab at AI leaders.

Although he didn’t say a word about Anthropic leadership, his main arc-rival in the AI race, its CEO has issued dire prophecies, painting a gloomy picture of the future.

“I also think some of the alternative visions painted by other companies are quite terrifying.

“I’m going to make sure that gets pushed against and is not what happens,” said Altman.

Altman’s latest remarks come after a week when Hugging Face reported on July 16 that a new kind of security flaw was detected in an AI agent that compromised the company’s infrastructure.

Hugging Face’s CEO termed the event “unprecedented.”

What’s the story behind the ‘Singularity’ buzz?

The singularity buzz has been an obsession of science-fiction writers for a century.

But the real buzz followed after Hollywood’s accomplished director James Cameron’s The Terminator, which carries a storyline about the dangers of an AI called Skynet.

It is portrayed as an AI system that achieves self-awareness via self-improvement and ultimately turns on its creators.