In a blog post written by Sam Altman, director of Open AI, which developed Chat GPT, it was announced that the company is now focusing on artificial super intelligence (ASI), or super intelligence as Altman calls it. Altman said that Open AI likes the products it has developed so far, but wants to open the doors to a ‘marvellous future’.

In explaining the purpose of developing ASI, Altman stated that these technologies will greatly accelerate scientific discoveries beyond what we humans alone can do, and that it can increase the welfare and wealth of people in general.

‘It sounds like science fiction right now, and it’s a little crazy to even talk about it,’ Altman said: ‘It’s okay – we’ve been through this before and we’re glad to be in the same position again. We are quite confident that in the next few years everyone will see what we see and that the need to act with great care while maximising far-reaching benefit and empowerment is paramount. Given the possibilities our work presents, Open AI cannot be a normal company.’

The super intelligence Altman is referring to here, by his own definition, sits far ahead of the agent AI that companies are currently discussing, which can multitask to complete the overall task when you give it a task. Altman says we will see agent AIs this year, with ASI coming later. He also claimed that Open AI is now confident that it knows how to build artificial general intelligence in the traditionally defined sense, not according to the definition agreed with Microsoft.

While the release of Chat GPT two years ago may have created a sense of enormous progress, the developments it brought with it, while interesting, are hardly groundbreaking. But the development of AI isn’t going to stop any time soon, and each new step forward brings us closer to artificial super intelligence, with AI that performs even better and is even more impressive. It is sure to be interesting to watch the developments in the coming years.