Sam Altman thinks AI will surpass human intelligence by 2030. His rival AI billionaires say it’ll be even sooner

Sam Altman has made possible his boldest prediction yet about when AI will surpass human intelligence.

Altman, always the AI optimist, has previously touted AI’s potential to someday outthink humans, but the technology’s past years of progress since OpenAI kicked off the AI arms race with ChatGPT’s release have shown him this moment could come sooner rather than later. 

“I would certainly say that by the end of this decade, by 2030, if we don’t have extraordinarily capable models that do things that we ourselves cannot do, I’d be very surprised,” he said in an interview with German newspaper Die Welt in late 2025.

The future looks even more optimistic, Altman added.

While AI may still not be able to do some things humans can do easily, models developed as soon as this year could be “quite surprising,” and progress rapidly, Altman said.

“I can easily imagine a world where 30% to 40% of the tasks that happen in the economy........

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