Sam Altman says people may someday “buy intelligence on a meter” like electricity or water and critics say the vision sounds more dystopian than innovative.

Sam Altman says OpenAI wants to sell intelligence like a utility

During a recent appearance at BlackRock in Washington, D.C., OpenAI’s Sam Altman, shared his vision for the future of AI. At one point saying, “We see a future where intelligence is a utility, like electricity or water, and people buy it from us on a meter.”

Altman was describing a world where AI becomes a foundational infrastructure, something woven into everyday life so deeply that consumers and businesses simply “plug into” it the same way they rely on electricity, Wi-Fi or running water.

  • Franconian_Nomad@feddit.orgEnglish
    22·
    6 days ago

    Honestly, you’re example could already be done today by a local model like like Qwen 3.6 27b. There’s no need to run an expensive cloud model for such a simple task.

    Wouldn’t even destroy jobs, there are always people needed to fry the burger.

    Now do I want to talk Rona fucking robot while ordering burger? Hell no. But it could be done economically without any problems.

    • badgermurphy@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      6 days ago

      I’m not sure what model they use there, but it is surprisingly poor given the limited problem space being covered. I can’t imagine a local model would work better than that.

      • Franconian_Nomad@feddit.orgEnglish
        11·
        6 days ago

        Strange. You should think that’s a pretty basic task. Like you said, limited problem space. Every current LLM that is big enough and has the necessary guardrails and instructions should be able to handle it.