Sam Altman Explains Why He Doesn't Want a Single Superintelligence 👀

Welcome to another edition of Horizon AI,

In today’s issue, we take a look at a conversation between OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Stripe co-founder John Collison on some of the biggest questions shaping the future of AI. They discuss topics ranging from AI discovering critical software vulnerabilities and solving complex mathematical problems to the challenge of controlling superintelligent models.

Let’s jump right in!

Read Time: 4.5’ min

Here's what's new today in the Horizon AI

• Chart of the week: AI-Related Jobs Are Surging Across the U.S.

• OpenAI, Google, Microsoft, and Anthropic back a shared AI scraping opt-out standard

• AI Findings/Resources

• AI tools to check out

• Video of the week

TOGETHER WITH ROKU

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Chart of the week

AI-Related Jobs Are Surging Across the U.S.

• AI-related roles have accounted for more than 750,000 new U.S. jobs since 2023, according to LinkedIn estimates. Data annotators led with 282,000 positions, followed by data center jobs (117,000) and AI engineers (105,000).

• These three categories alone account for approximately 504,000 new jobs.

• AI-related positions offer a median salary of around $180,000, compared with $80,000 across all jobs, highlighting the growing wage premium associated with AI skills.

Source

AI News

AI AND CONTENT

AI Giants Back a Shared AI Scraping Opt-Out Standard

OpenAI, Google, Microsoft, and Anthropic plan to support a new standard that lets website publishers set their AI training preferences across multiple companies through a single control.

Details:

• The proposed standard introduces a shared “policy token” that publishers can add to their website’s robots.txt file, which already tells web crawlers which parts of a site they can access.

• The proposal was submitted to the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) by Kevin Kelley, a technical lead for standards at Anthropic.

• Currently, publishers must communicate their AI training preferences separately to each AI company. The shared signal is intended to make that process more consistent.

• OpenAI, Google, Microsoft, and Anthropic say their AI crawlers will respect the signal and restrict access to websites that use it.

• Microsoft will also offer more specific controls, allowing publishers to opt out of AI training or AI grounding, which involves using verified sources to support AI-generated answers. Websites will still appear in Bing search results.

The proposal comes as publishers seek more control over how AI companies collect and use their content. Anthropic has already adopted the signal. Google and Microsoft plan to support it next year, while OpenAI expects to implement it in the coming months.

Source

AI Findings/Resources

👀 Who actually gets rich if Anthropic lists at $2 trillion?

🤨 Anthropic says helping others is core to its mission. 3 philanthropy gurus say they'll believe it when they see it

💪 This woman built an AI workout companion that gives her real-time feedback while she works out at home

💘 Is AI your new wingman? How chatbots are transforming dating

📝 Hunger beats tenure: Advice for junior engineers

AI Tools to check out

👾 Simulon: Bring imagined characters, real objects and your own designs into the world around you.

🥝 Kiwi: proactive AI assistant that texts you first.

🍓 Strawberry: a browser with built-in AI companions that take work off your hands.

🖥️  Beam.win: Run AI agents on one Mac and use its windows on another.

Video of the week

Sam Altman on Superintelligence, AI Agent Teams, and Cybersecurity

In this conversation, Sam Altman joins John Collison for a wide-ranging discussion about the accelerating capabilities of AI and the changes they could bring to science, cybersecurity, business, and everyday life. Altman explains why he believes multiple AI agents working together could be a better path than relying on a single superintelligent system, while exploring the challenges of keeping increasingly capable models under human control.

AI's Growing Capabilities and Cybersecurity:

• Altman explains that AI models are becoming increasingly effective at finding vulnerabilities in existing software. Recent experiments scanning large codebases, including PHP, suggest that the internet may contain far more serious security flaws than previously expected.

• He believes this could force a fundamental redesign of software and internet infrastructure, rather than simply patching individual vulnerabilities. New systems may need to be built around the assumption that AI will continue becoming more capable.

• Discussing AI safety, Altman says sandboxing increasingly powerful models is an unsolved challenge. While security restrictions and monitoring can help, eventually, keeping humans in control may depend on having strong confidence that these models are properly aligned with human intentions.

The Rise of AI Agent Teams:

• Altman believes teams of AI agents could offer a promising alternative to a single superintelligent system. Rather than concentrating enormous intelligence in one model, he would prefer a future where many highly capable agents work together, challenge one another, and maintain a balance of competing interests.

• He attributes the rise of agent teams to advances in test-time compute, which allows models to spend significantly more computing power reasoning through difficult problems. Tasks that once required a single model can now be distributed across thousands of parallel agents.

• OpenAI has already experimented with this approach to tackle complex mathematical problems, including work involving the Navier-Stokes equations. Altman says the company spent substantial computing resources exploring these problems, but expects better models and improved approaches to make similar research dramatically more efficient.

The Future of Computing and AI Infrastructure:

• Altman expects demand for computing power to continue growing as more capable and affordable AI models become available. To address supply constraints, OpenAI is developing its own chips, building data centers, and working on robotics that could eventually help manufacture components and construct new infrastructure.

• He also envisions AI-controlled robots operating factories, producing turbines and solar panels, and building data centers, creating a system where AI helps expand the physical infrastructure needed to power further AI development.

• Altman believes the cost of producing computing power should eventually fall significantly. He argues that cheaper energy, chips, and infrastructure will be essential to making intelligence more affordable and widely accessible.

Personal AI Agents and the Future of Business:

• Altman sees personal AI agents as one of the most promising developments in the field, but believes the industry has yet to reach its defining breakthrough. He expects successful agents to combine intelligence, personal context, and access to tools, while becoming reliable enough to handle increasingly complex tasks.

• He also predicts that people will increasingly interact with businesses through their preferred AI assistants instead of navigating individual websites and mobile apps. Rather than filling out forms or manually completing repetitive tasks, users will simply tell their agents what they need done.

• This shift could force businesses to rethink their digital strategies. Altman agrees that traditional websites and apps may become less important as interfaces, while brand reputation, customer trust, and the actual quality of products and services remain important sources of competitive advantage.

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Gina 👩🏻‍💻