It was only last month that OpenAI’s Sam Altman found himself in hot water over remarks about ChatGPT’s energy consumption, but now, at the BlackRock US Infrastructure Summit in Washington, DC on Wednesday, the entrepreneur has come under fire for comments about intelligence.
In conversation with OpenAI board member and Global Infrastructure Partners CEO Adebayo Ogunlesi, Altman said: “Fundamentally, our business and the business of every other model provider, is going to look like selling tokens.
“They may come from bigger or smaller models, which makes them more or less expensive. They may use more or less reasoning, which also makes them more or less expensive.
“They may be running all the time in the background trying to help you out. They may run only when you need them, when you pay less.
“They may work super hard, spend tens of millions, hundreds of millions, someday billions of dollars on a single problem that’s really valuable. But we see a future where intelligence is a utility – like electricity or water – and people buy it from us, on a meter, and use it for whatever they want to use it for.”
The businessman’s comments have since been branded “absolutely disgusting”:
Researcher Melissa Dykes tweeted her own made-up version of Altman’s remarks and said: “’We stole all your knowledge and art, and now we’re gonna put a meter on it and sell it back to you. You’re welcome’”:
Podcaster Brett Kollmann wrote: “Rich people used to build parks and museums”:
Market analyst Ed Elson commented: “1) Make people stupid. 2) Charge them for intelligence”:
Journalist Tana Ganeva claimed “nothing in Black Mirror is as Black Mirror as this guy”:
And another X/Twitter user said: “Every week, a tech executive goes onstage to tell the world they’re deliberately making the world worse because it will make them money”:
OpenAI has been approached by indy100 for comment.
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