ChatGPT CEO Sam Altman has made a bold and ominous prediction for children born from 2025 onwards, issuing a warning to all new parents of a changing world thanks to developments in AI.
Being one of the most powerful individuals in the artificial intelligence world, ChatGPT creator OpenAI's CEO Sam Altman is always voicing his thoughts on how the rapidly developing technology will affect the world both now and in the future.
While he once called the formation of OpenAI a 'Manhattan Project for AI' and rarely shies away from calling out his own products – expressing his concern that people trust ChatGPT and outlining the vulnerabilities of his new 'Agent' tool – Altman remains incredibly optimistic for what AI can do for the world despite widespread concerns.
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His latest hypothesis relates to the future of any children born in this year and from now on, as he believes that they will be part of a change that has come about because of AI.
What has Altman said about children born in 2025?
Speaking in a lengthy interview with YouTuber and journalist Cleo Abram, Sam Altman proclaimed: "A kid born today will never be smarter than AI, ever."
While this is a relatively simple statement, especially as Elon Musk only recently asserted that the latest Grok model was smarter than graduate students at 'almost everything', it does reflect quite how much the world will change for almost all young children now because of the advancements made in artificial intelligence like Altman's ChatGPT.
"A kid born today, by the time that kid kind of understands the way the world works, will just always be used to an incredibly fast rate of things improving and discovering new science," Altman continues.
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"They will just never know any other world. It will seem totally natural, seem unthinkable and stone age that we used to use computers or phones or any kind of technology that was not way smarter than we were. You know, we will think how bad those people of the 2020s had it."
This isn't a particularly new phenomenon, as any children born after the advent of computers or the internet will likely feel the same way, but it likely accurately represents quite how transformative the development of AI has been and will continue to be on the world.
How does this affect parenting from now onwards?
When asked what advice he would give to parents facing this rapidly changing environment for their children in the wake of AI, Altman had a simple response despite the upheaval that the tech will create:
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"Probably nothing different than the way you've been parenting kids for tens of thousands of years. Love your kids, show them the world, support them in whatever they want to do and teach them how to be a good person," Altman expressed.
Despite all of what AI has to offer and how it will change the world dramatically, Altman believes that parenting's fundamentals should and will always remain the same – although with some terrifying scientific timelines in place who knows whether the world will be able to continue to foster this viewpoint.
"I want my kid to think I had a terrible constrained life and that he has this incredible infinite canvas of stuff to do that is like the way of the world," Altman continued, and it appears as if he believes that only AI will be able to achieve that — especially as we edge ever closer towards achieving artificial general intelligence.