At a talk at Stanford eCorner recently Sam Altman said, ‘Whether OpenAI burns a few billion a year, I don’t care… (the focus is) to stay on a trajectory to create more value for society.’

According to Sam Altman, they are making AGI and all this worth it. ChatGPT-4, by comparison, is the dumbest model. GPT-5 is going to be smarter than GPT-4 and GPT-6 is going to be smarter than GPT-5. Right now, they are not at the top of the curve, but it is always going to be better.

At the outset in OpenAI they did not realize that they will require funding to this extent. The idea was to push the frontiers of AI research.

There are discussions on X about OpenAI’s burn of money. It exceeds the GDP of some countries. However, once AI reaches AGI, it would be miniscule price to pay for something that could transform humanity.

In the beginning of this year, Altman was expecting a capital investment $5 to $7 trillion to reshape the business of chips and AI.

AGI equals the full cognitive abilities of human beings or even at times surpasses them. Human beings learn from the environment, observation, reading, interactions, experiences and so on. Right now, the AI is narrow intelligence. It is a journey towards general intelligence. This concept was initiated by Alan Turing who said that we should have computer that cannot be distinguished from a human being. It is an intelligent computer.

AGI will have wide variety of applications. At the same time, AGI can turn rogue and take charge of things and do things detrimental to human life. We should be cautious, and regulate the journey towards AGI so that it remains aligned to ethical values.