Sam Altman wants AI to become a ‘super-competent colleague’

• OpenAI CEO Sam Altman described the ultimate AI app in the MIT Technology Review.
• He envisions a “super-competent colleague,” a major upgrade from ChatGPT, whom he called “stupid.”
• Altman’s vision is that AI will take on real-world tasks and not just function as a chatbot.

In Sam Altman’s vision of the future, AI is a bit intimidating.

“What you really want,” OpenAI’s CEO told the MIT Technology Review, is a “super-competent colleague who knows absolutely everything about my entire life, every email, every conversation I’ve ever had, but who doesn’t feel as an extension.”

And they are self-starters who don’t need constant guidance. They will tackle some tasks, presumably simpler, immediately, Altman said. They make a first attempt at more complex tasks and come back to the user if they have any questions.

The bottom line is that Altman wants AI to function as more than just a chatbot. It should help people achieve things in the real world, he said.

That would be a huge step forward from what OpenAI currently offers.

Altman reportedly called ChatGPT “incredibly stupid,” even though employees are already using it to speed up their workflows, develop code, write emails, and more. So there’s no telling how much more productive we’ll become once Altman’s magical model colleague hits the market.

Altman did not specify when this tool will be available or how advanced AI will need to be to support it. The company’s other offerings, such as the video generator Sora and the image generator DALL-E, still require significant guidance to complete tasks. They are also not designed to perceive information from the environment and use it to achieve specific goals.

But OpenAI’s upcoming language model, GPT-5, could be a step in that direction.

A source who has seen it before told BI that it was “materially better” than existing models. The source also said that OpenAI is developing a service where users can call an AI agent to perform tasks autonomously.

Sources have said that GPT-5 may be released by mid-year. Altman doesn’t say much, though.

“Yes,” he simply told reporters this week at an event in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he was asked when OpenAI would release GPT-5.