OpenAI's Sam Altman Predicts Man And Machine Will 'Merge' And Be Surpassed By AI Between 2025-2027

“We could plug electrodes into our brains, or we could all just become really close friends with a chatbot,” Altman described.

Sam Altman, co-founder of OpenAI, believes that by this year, 2025, or by 2027, mankind will have merged with machines and artificial intelligence, and/or AI will simply be surpassed by AI in a moment that has been dubbed the “singularity.”

Altman’s company is part of Trump’s project Stargate, a joint venture created by by OpenAI, SoftBank, Oracle, and investment firm MGX - which Trump said, “This is to me a very big deal. It could lead to something that could be the biggest of all.”

In a press release published on January 21st, the day the project was announced, OpenAI explained their role in Stargate:

The Stargate Project is a new company which intends to invest $500 billion over the next four years building new AI infrastructure for OpenAI in the United States. We will begin deploying $100 billion immediately. This infrastructure will secure American leadership in AI, create hundreds of thousands of American jobs, and generate massive economic benefit for the entire world. This project will not only support the re-industrialization of the United States but also provide a strategic capability to protect the national security of America and its allies.

The initial equity funders in Stargate are SoftBank, OpenAI, Oracle, and MGX. SoftBank and OpenAI are the lead partners for Stargate, with SoftBank having financial responsibility and OpenAI having operational responsibility. Masayoshi Son will be the chairman.

Arm, Microsoft, NVIDIA, Oracle, and OpenAI are the key initial technology partners. The buildout is currently underway, starting in Texas, and we are evaluating potential sites across the country for more campuses as we finalize definitive agreements.

As part of Stargate, Oracle, NVIDIA, and OpenAI will closely collaborate to build and operate this computing system. This builds on a deep collaboration between OpenAI and NVIDIA going back to 2016 and a newer partnership between OpenAI and Oracle.

This also builds on the existing OpenAI partnership with Microsoft. OpenAI will continue to increase its consumption of Azure as OpenAI continues its work with Microsoft with this additional compute to train leading models and deliver great products and services.

All of us look forward to continuing to build and develop AI—and in particular AGI—for the benefit of all of humanity. We believe that this new step is critical on the path, and will enable creative people to figure out how to use AI to elevate humanity.

This project will greatly help move the United States and the world closer to this point of “singularity” potentially this year.

Altman shared his vision in a blog post he published in 2017 simply called “The Merge.” The following is what he wrote:

The Merge

A popular topic in Silicon Valley is talking about what year humans and machines will merge (or, if not, what year humans will get surpassed by rapidly improving AI or a genetically enhanced species). Most guesses seem to be between 2025 and 2075.

People used to call this the singularity; now it feels uncomfortable and real enough that many seem to avoid naming it at all.

Perhaps another reason people stopped using the word “singularity” is that it implies a single moment in time, and it now looks like the merge is going to be a gradual process. And gradual processes are hard to notice.

I believe the merge has already started, and we are a few years in. Our phones control us and tell us what to do when; social media feeds determine how we feel; search engines decide what we think.

The algorithms that make all this happen are no longer understood by any one person. They optimize for what their creators tell them to optimize for, but in ways that no human could figure out — they are what today seems like sophisticated AI, and tomorrow will seem like child’s play. And they’re extremely effective — at least speaking for myself, I have a very hard time resisting what the algorithms want me to do. Until I made a real effort to combat it, I found myself getting extremely addicted to the internet. [1]

We are already in the phase of co-evolution — the AIs affect, effect, and infect us, and then we improve the AI. We build more computing power and run the AI on it, and it figures out how to build even better chips.

This probably cannot be stopped. As we have learned, scientific advancement eventually happens if the laws of physics do not prevent it.

More important than that, unless we destroy ourselves first, superhuman AI is going to happen, genetic enhancement is going to happen, and brain-machine interfaces are going to happen. It is a failure of human imagination and human arrogance to assume that we will never build things smarter than ourselves.

Our self-worth is so based on our intelligence that we believe it must be singular and not slightly higher than all the other animals on a continuum. Perhaps the AI will feel the same way and note that differences between us and bonobos are barely worth discussing.

The merge can take a lot of forms: We could plug electrodes into our brains, or we could all just become really close friends with a chatbot. But I think a merge is probably our best-case scenario. If two different species both want the same thing and only one can have it—in this case, to be the dominant species on the planet and beyond—they are going to have conflict. We should all want one team where all members care about the well-being of everyone else.

Although the merge has already begun, it’s going to get a lot weirder. We will be the first species ever to design our own descendants. My guess is that we can either be the biological bootloader for digital intelligence and then fade into an evolutionary tree branch, or we can figure out what a successful merge looks like.

It’s probably going to happen sooner than most people think. Hardware is improving at an exponential rate—the most surprising thing I’ve learned working on OpenAI is just how correlated increasing computing power and AI breakthroughs are—and the number of smart people working on AI is increasing exponentially as well. Double exponential functions get away from you fast.

It would be good for the entire world to start taking this a lot more seriously now. Worldwide coordination doesn’t happen quickly, and we need it for this.

[1] I believe attention hacking is going to be the sugar epidemic of this generation. I can feel the changes in my own life — I can still wistfully remember when I had an attention span. My friends’ young children don’t even know that’s something they should miss. I am angry and unhappy more often, but I channel it into productive change less often, instead chasing the dual dopamine hits of likes and outrage.

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AUTHOR COMMENTARY

Regulars of The WP know that I have been warning for years - (see more articles on winepressnews.com) - that the world is racing towards the point where man will be replaced and outmoded by AI, and eventually many will be forced or voluntarily line up to become “transhuman;” seeking “salvation” and techno-nirvana and experiencing the next so-called stage in human evolution. It’s madness, but that is the crazed world in which we now live.

Personally, I think what is happening with AI provides a wider meaning to this prophecy given approximately 2,000 years ago:

1 Timothy 4:1 Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils; [2] Speaking lies in hypocrisy; having their conscience seared with a hot iron; [3] Forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from meats, which God hath created to be received with thanksgiving of them which believe and know the truth.

Literally “having their conscience seared with a hot iron” because their mind and body will have been taken over and influenced by AI and algorithms. This’s what Larry Ellison of Oracle, one of the guys who is a part of Stargate. These are must reads :

Oracle's Larry Ellison Wants To 'Unify' All Of America's Data And DNA Into AI Datacenters To Be Studied And Mitigate People's Lives In A Dystopian Nightmare

Trump To Usher In The "Golden Age Of Vaccines" With Project Stargate, With The Aid Of Larry Ellison's Oracle To Track Recipients With 'Precision Accuracy'

Lost in the shuffle in this AI race between the United States and China for tech supremacy and to make gadzooks more money, is how these dark endeavors are driving us faster into inescapable enslavement and imprisonment: job loss will be the least of people’s concerns, though I am sure many, with plenty of prodding and “free lunches” attached to it, people will comply.

We already coming into this year that 2025 was going to be a roller coaster ride (and that’s putting it mildly), and Altman’s prophecy only reaffirms that…

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[7] Who goeth a warfare any time at his own charges? who planteth a vineyard, and eateth not of the fruit thereof? or who feedeth a flock, and eateth not of the milk of the flock? [8] Say I these things as a man? or saith not the law the same also? [9] For it is written in the law of Moses, Thou shalt not muzzle the mouth of the ox that treadeth out the corn. Doth God take care for oxen? [10] Or saith he it altogether for our sakes? For our sakes, no doubt, this is written: that he that ploweth should plow in hope; and that he that thresheth in hope should be partaker of his hope. (1 Corinthians 9:7-10).

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