PANews reported on February 10 that OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said in a blog post that AGI (artificial general intelligence) is gradually emerging and its impact may surpass all previous technological changes. He made three key observations about the economics of AI:
1. The intelligence of AI models is logarithmically related to computing resources - the investment in training computing, data and inference computing can be increased infinitely and obtain continuous and predictable returns.
2. The cost of using AI decreases by about 10 times every year - for example, the cost of a word of GPT-4 in early 2023 is about 150 times lower than the cost of GPT-4o in mid-2024, far exceeding the growth rate of Moore's Law.
3. Linearly growing intelligence brings super-exponential socioeconomic value - this drives ever-increasing investment and will not stop in the short term.
Altman expects AI agents (such as software engineering assistants) to become "virtual colleagues" and to penetrate industries. He believes that the economic impact of AI may be similar to that of the transistor, changing the world in subtle but profound ways. At the same time, the popularity of AI may lead to a sharp drop in the cost of some goods, while the price of scarce resources such as land will rise.
He stressed that policies and social consensus are crucial to the future of AGI. In order to ensure that the benefits of AGI are widely distributed, new economic models may be needed, such as providing a "computing budget" to everyone in the world. He believes that by 2035, everyone should be able to mobilize intellectual resources equivalent to the global wisdom in 2025, which will greatly unleash human creativity.
