I started getting posts on my social media feeds about Sam Altman declaring that we are now in the Singularity.
Yeah right… nowadays you can’t believe anything you read on social media. While scrolling, I could see clips of him on both reputable and not so reputable pages. I ended up watching the clip.
Initially, it appeared like he did say that, but why was there only such a short clip? Could it be AI-generated? Where is the full video? I wasn’t convinced.
The only way to answer that would be to watch the whole interview. So I searched YouTube for it but all I could find were short clips from low-quality channels, featuring people commenting through five-dollar mics with terrible sound … or five-minute news reports that included the clip somewhere in the middle…
(Seriously why has the YouTube and Google search become so bad?)
So I asked ChatGPT 5.6 to find the interview for me and within seconds, it did. It even gave me the timestamp.
And I listened.
“We are now in the Singularity. [..] I have been waiting for this all my life.” Watch the whole interview here.
Sam Altman actually said it. That’s quite shocking from all perspectives, and it is also extremely exciting. It’s such an extraordinary claim. An historic declaration. But what does it actually mean? My mind immediately exploded with questions. Not because Altman had answered any of them, but because his extraordinary and frustratingly vague statement opened all of them:
- What do you mean by Singularity? Did you encounter the Singularity in one of the models that have not been released to the public? When will it be released?
- What led you to claim that that model is the Singularity? What kind of behavior did it display?
- How are you testing it?
- Is it contained?
- How do you contain an intelligence that is superior to yours?
- Shouldn’t we take it for granted that the Singularity will eventually escape any and all of our restrictions imposed on it?
- Does it still make mistakes?
- Have you tried curing cancer and other diseases with it?
- Can we all agree as humanity not to use it for wars?
- Can we measure the degree to which the Singularity is more intelligent than humans right now? Or is it too far off?
- If it’s more intelligent than us, why does it still need us? Why do you have to continue to develop it? Can’t it develop itself?
- Does that mean that AGI has already been achieved?
- Do other companies also possess singularity-level models?
- Are you actively using it on projects? Has its intelligence already been used for meaningful research?
- Do you realize the responsibility you have towards ethical and positive usage of it? Because it’s not enough to avoid harm. Such potential should be immediately used to improve society.
- Are we as a human race ready for it?
And so many more….
So I let the interview play and the follow-up question was: What do you think the biggest impacts are on getting this part of the curve right?
What a disappointment for a follow-up question on such an historic claim.
I was not ready today to hear that we are in the Singularity. I don’t understand how Sam Altman can just casually drop such a bomb of a statement. I needed to be prepared. I don’t know how the world will change after this. I don’t know how fast the world and my life will change. I am not sure how to plan for the future strategically with the parameter of the Singularity in it.
But I do realize that I have the privilege to be alive during a very exciting and interesting time in the history of our civilization. Will it be an extremely destructive time? Will it be an extremely positive time?
One thing is for sure: it will be quite ADVENTUROUS.
And we, the public, need access to it. This cannot become the private property of a handful of corporations. RELEASE THE KRAKEN GUYS! Responsibly, but release it!!! :))