source · blog

Three Observations

src_altman_three_observations

https://blog.samaltman.com/three-observations

reliability

0.40

authors: Sam Altman

published: 2025-02

accessed: 2026-04-19

Notes

Personal blog post by OpenAI CEO. Primary testimony re: his own views, but advocacy-coded on economic claims. Slight upward adjustment from blog prior (0.35) because Altman is a primary source on OpenAI's framing and roadmap.

Intake provenance

method: httpx
tool: afls-ingest/0.0.1
git sha: 604c9dfd252a
at: 2026-04-19T18:50:11.272955Z
sha256: b7809c2770a6…

Evidence from this source (5)

Altman frames the deployment choice around AGI as a binary between individual e… support

weight

0.90

method: primary_testimony · locator: paragraphs on policy and empowerment

“directionally, as we get closer to achieving AGI, we believe that trending more towards individual empowerment is important; the other likely path we can see is AI being used by authoritarian governments to control their population through mass surveillance and loss of autonomy.”
Altman claims the cost to use a given level of AI capability falls roughly 10x… support

weight

0.75

method: primary_testimony · locator: Observation 2

“The cost to use a given level of AI falls about 10x every 12 months... the price per token dropped about 150x in that time period.”
Altman claims the socioeconomic value of linearly increasing AI intelligence is… support

weight

0.70

method: expert_estimate · locator: Observation 3

“The socioeconomic value of linearly increasing intelligence is super-exponential in nature. A consequence of this is that we see no reason for exponentially increasing investment to stop in the near future.”
Altman asserts that the intelligence of an AI model scales roughly as the logar… support

weight

0.70

method: expert_estimate · locator: Observation 1

“The intelligence of an AI model roughly equals the log of the resources used to train and run it... the scaling laws that predict this are accurate over many orders of magnitude.”
Altman states that the balance of power between capital and labor could be disr… support

weight

0.90

method: primary_testimony · locator: closing paragraphs on distribution

“the balance of power between capital and labor could easily get messed up, and this may require early intervention. We are open to strange-sounding ideas like giving some 'compute budget' to enable everyone on Earth to use a lot of AI.”