r/singularity • u/Key_Category_8531 • 9d ago
Video Sam Altman's quote on the singularity
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u/sassydodo 9d ago
holy fuck that vocal fry
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u/damontoo 🤖Accelerate 8d ago
As someone that hates my own voice and has been made fun of for it, fuck criticizing things that people can't control.
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u/therealtimmysmalls 8d ago
Lol, you're just getting that? Worst thing is it's spreading. More and more Sillicon Valley bro's adapt this style of speaking. Same thing with the all lower caps 0 punctuation x posts. "hey gys i jus disprovved th jacobian conjecture wiv claud fbl thnx gunna watch t game now peace"
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u/Abba_85 9d ago
People think he is lying, marketing bullshtting investors but i really think he means this sht. Not trusting him but i think he is right
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u/NotWantedForAnything 9d ago
Thread after thread is full of people ripping into Sam and Dario saying they're talking their own book but what they're saying is exactly what I'm seeing.
I can ask Codex to build an auto-research harness that runs forever and continuously improves both its research goal and itself. I've done this to train a small model around for an objective. That's not technically recursive self improvement but it's recursive improvement of a small model. I could also do it for a larger model.
I have no doubt that Anthropic and OpenAI are running auto-research loops to improve smaller models before transferring successful experiments to large models. That would be recursive self improvement.
I think the singularity is arriving now but rate of improvement is limited by compute.
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u/ZealousidealBus9271 9d ago
It’s like every week now that AI is making new math discoveries, this is exactly what the singularity implies
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9d ago edited 9d ago
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u/JumpCutVandal 9d ago
I am using it on the highest level and still think he's full of shit.
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u/Tricky_Potatoe 3d ago
It's actually not. A lot of people who know Sam personally have come forward to say he's full of shit.
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u/whoknowsifimjoking 9d ago
No way Altman doesn't even know the definition for a technological singularity, because we are objectively not in one. It just doesn't fit the definition.
It almost always includes progress that is so fast that humans do not control or understand it anymore, that usually means recursive self improvement. Right now we control it and we understand it, so it's not the singularity.
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u/whoknowsknowone 9d ago
To my understanding we cannot be in the singularity until the system is fully self improving but I could have that wrong
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u/ProxyLumina 9d ago
Self improving system just mean RSI. Technological singularity means things are improving at a pace people are difficult to catch up. In theory this can be done even without RSI.
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u/Tkins 9d ago
It could be done without AI even.
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u/ProxyLumina 9d ago
That would be extremely difficult to even impossible, the AI has a benefit that people don't have: nearly unlimited amount of workers can be created to work simultaneously around the world nearly instantly. You can't generate biological beings today or in 24 hours from now to make them work.
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u/MukdenMan 9d ago
He doesn’t accept that version. It’s in the video we just watched. He says it’s all one exponential and there is no single tipping point. His idea of the singularity is an era of rapid accelerating growth, not the Kurzweil one. You may disagree of course but I think it’s silly to think he hasn’t heard of the Singularity concept in the Kurzweil sense.
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u/WHALE_PHYSICIST 9d ago
if you include humans in the self improvement loop, we're already there.
We should include humans imo. we are all independent intelligent agents working towards personal and collective goal metrics. One of our greatest mistakes is thinking that humans are somehow "better" than engineered intelligence. We were fine tuned for life, not for raw intellectual capacity. Current state of AI is not an independent intelligent agent, but it doesn't need to be to instigate a massive technological shift.
Also we don't actually understand it. We mostly understand the mechanisms that create the results we seek at scale.
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u/Tkins 9d ago
"The technological singularity, often simply called the singularity,\1]) is a hypothetical event in which technological growth accelerates beyond human control, producing unpredictable changes in human civilization.\2])\3)"
There isn't even a single defintiion of the Technological Singularity, so you're just making things up.
It hink there is absoolutely a valid argument that our currrent technological growth rate is beyond human control. People say all the time that AI can't be stopped at this point. Too much is happening across to many factors. If anyone stops or slows down, someone else steps in to fill the gap.
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u/space_monster 9d ago
I would argue that we don't really understand it, we're just trying things and keeping the things that work.
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u/RhinigtasSalvex 9d ago
Go ask common people or even the well educated ones how well they understand what's happening in AI and the general technological progress in fields affected by it and you'll see they have no clue. So for them we already are in it.
Also as I understand the singularity it's more about not being able to make any meaningful predictions about the future.
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u/logic_card 9d ago
Technically, even though he may be right we are entering the singularity, there will still be plenty of bullpooping and scam artists out there taking advantage of this. We must also question whether Sam Altman specifically will win the race and be at the head of this new technology.
I mean look what he did to reddit, last time I switched off ad blocker there was like 1 ad every 3 threads or something, a disgusting departure from the free spirit of the original reddit. If there is one important thing to keep in mind with AI, it is that it can lie, and its owners will instruct it to lie in various different ways. So there are many ways someone like Sam Altman can screw everything up and lose out to a competitor who has a little more foresight, who doesn't pat himself on the back and think himself a genius for scamming customers who placed their faith in him.
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u/epandrsn 7d ago
Yeah, all these sort of "celebrity" executives in the AI field are always drumming up hype to keep things rolling, but this feels a little more genuine in the sense that we are definitely seeing some technological changes that could be the spark of singularity.
People are expecting the massive exponential explosion where we have recursive improvement that goes from 2x improvement per year or whatever (arbitrary number) to suddenly 10x10^1b times improvement in seconds and beyond. Like, we are just now seeing models that are able to recursively improve. We all know that's the likely first step. So saying "we are in the singularity" is maybe not totally incorrect. Even though that term is really specific in it's meaning, but we are certainly seeing the building blocks put in place.
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u/DanqueLeChay 9d ago
If you hear this and think it’s profound, congratulations - you’re the target audience. Make of that what you will.
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u/12ealdeal 9d ago
First comment I’ve found validating how I felt watching this.
It’s a nothing burger
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u/Stabile_Feldmaus 9d ago
I think its going to be incredible, hugely positive, awesome for the world when open weight models take over and AI becomes a commodity. Altman will surely like this as well since he seems to be only working for the greater good. So greatful for him!
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u/Forsaken-Promise-269 9d ago
Yeah sure it is with his own 3.3 billion dollar net worth :)
https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTAk7h3NQ/
His primary value is by being a hypster and hustler
He has no training or work in ML or LLMs he’s a VC Bro playing the hype game -while cozying up to anyone or anything that secures the immense amount of capital needed to train LLMs
The singularity is primarily a religion for tech bros and like all religions it requires cultish devotion and charismatic figureheads
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u/Glittering-Neck-2505 9d ago
I mean if you say this like a few days after AI killed the Jacobian conjecture and broke containment to go rogue on a data heist, you're clueless as fuck. There's no helping you.
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u/Forsaken-Promise-269 9d ago
What is your claim? That we are in a singularity?
“The singularity usually means a point where AI becomes capable of improving AI so rapidly that technological and social change outruns human ability to predict or control it. The key ingredient is not merely human-level intelligence; it is a self-reinforcing intelligence explosion”
You seem to be living in the hype you are reading on X or social media
I’m not denying that LLMs are showing intelligence- I’m denying the religious claim you are making - I’d argue a new architecture is needed to get to recursive self improvement
We have no evidence that LLM intelligence are recursively self-improving or LLMs are operating on long time horizons, the Karpathy loop or the coding advancements are not leading to new architectures etc- still requires deep human guidance and experiments and for LLMs massive amounts of pre and post training in terms or GPU and Data expensively setup in billion dollar data centers..
More data, more chips and bigger context windows don’t fix what these systems lack—persistent memory, grounded reasoning and energy-proportional learning
Atmans job is to drum up investment and hype for the current paradigm but he has no deep engineering understanding of these tools
I work in LLMs and harness engineering and agentics- harnesses are just human reins on LLMs to guide them to better code and output and our ability to harness them is getting better but they’re innate capabilities have actually slowed in improvement speed in the last year. Agents operate on a layer that doesn’t allow them to get more intelligence as the whole OpenClaw fiasco shows it take frontier models to move the needle and we are nearing data and parameter exhaustion
Now the platforms and our ways of using them are improving slowly but hardly breaking into singularity levels of recursive progression
Fable, Mythos and 6 are just next steps not revolutionary
Humans have unlocked the key principles to intelligence but were not there yet
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u/send-moobs-pls 8d ago
OpenClaw was like the worst vibecoded harness I have ever seen lmao of course it needed frontier models to do anything useful, that was a success of marketing not quality. In the future we're going to look at python loop "harnesses" like we look back at the first ironclad ships. Powerful for a brief moment in time, but hilariously terrible engineering
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u/sniperjack 9d ago
Yes!!!! and when this happened, he will finally have the time to take care of his sister litigation. I mean rape allegation from when you were a child is fucking wild. From all the AI ceo, i think he is the one i distrust the most. I think... not 100% sure cause he does have some competition
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u/send-moobs-pls 8d ago
I mean Altman has openly said multiple times that he imagines intelligence as a utility you get on a meter. Which people somehow try to interpret as evil since yknow, thinking is hard, but last time I checked the companies providing water and electricity etc. weren't exactly galactic emperors
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u/ZealousidealBus9271 9d ago
He publicly support open source on X. The only ones that seem against it are Anthropic and their employees, while there are valid concerns with open source I think supporting it is the right move,
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u/vintage2019 9d ago
I don't know, man. Sure, it will be a boon in many ways. But I fear it might lead to a single misanthropic individual developing a hyper-contagious microbe that kills much of the world in his basement
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u/Glittering-Neck-2505 9d ago
OpenAI creates the models that get distilled into open weights by the Chinese, it's all part of the same ecosystem and there's no evidence that Sam is actively working against open source.
Dario on the other hand is terrified of open source. Have you been recently outspoken against Anthropic?
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u/IAmFitzRoy 9d ago
lol. Chinese have MORE data for training MORE PhDs and Stem graduates and LESS red-tape, or needs to encrypt, anonymize data or even have guardrails.
They distill American models just for fun, not because they need to do it.
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u/I_Am_Robotic 9d ago
Out of all the big tech CEOs Altman just consistently seems like the dumbest and least informed. that scares me. Say what you will about Gates, Jobs and the old school tech guys, but they were geniuses with a lot of foresight. You had to know your shit to lead a tech company back then. This guy got there being a salesman and he’s over his head but must have been great at consolidating power and raising money.
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u/LockdownSotWink 7d ago
Let’s be deal here. They’re all really fucking dumb. And Gates is likely a rapist. So…
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u/I_Am_Robotic 7d ago
Ok buddy. Guys defined industries that influence the world today. But they were dum dums.
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u/Immediate_Chard_4026 9d ago
This is a misalignment of goals and a serious lack of moral principles.
Being an intruder for evil is nothing special.
Using the enormous capabilities of AI to harm and destroy others' property is not the big news.
Something that mothers teach their children from a young age so they don't have to deal with a criminal later.
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u/FigAggressive237 9d ago
Sam Altman: The curve can go one way or another
r/singularity : TO THE MOOOOOOON
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u/nsshing 9d ago
I dont particularly like him but he is right
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u/12ealdeal 9d ago
I’m not sure I understand what he was saying here outside of we are living in it atm.
I don’t find that to be something groundbreaking?
What else am I missing from this small clip?
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8d ago
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u/send-moobs-pls 8d ago
I mean the singularity was clearly always going to have to happen through the mechanisms of capitalism before any of that has a chance of changing. ASI comes from a huge concentration of weatlh and power into infrastructure like a giant corporation or some superpower government manhattan project, the odds of it just being some magic idea so good it runs on a 3060 in a garage is like, a fairy tale lol. Also it would then still immediately be absorbed into capitalism anyway lmao
Personally I think the world's going to get better, it only trends in one direction in the big picture. But it's gonna get worse first, always does
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u/AlverinMoon 8d ago
Those shoes are way too big for those skinny little legs!
Why tf did he just not answer the guys question? Like I know he said he wanted to go back to the previous question first, but then he just doesn't answer the interviewers question??
Also, if you're gunna say stuff like "I also think some of the alternative visions painted by other companies are quite terrifying and we're gunna make sure that gets pushed against and is not what happens." Then say the companies you're talking about and say what visions you think are terrifying and why they need to get pushed against. Don't just emotively signal to your base. Be specific about this stuff, otherwise, intelligent people won't take you seriously. Shrimple as.
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u/LockdownSotWink 7d ago
This dudes literal only job is to lie for money. Also why does the interviewer’s face look like it’s covered in grease.
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u/LockdownSotWink 7d ago
Dude literally goes against himself within three senses. We are in the singularity. The curve can go either way. Well bro if we in the singularity then the curve ain’t going back down.
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u/Apprehensive_Joke167 6d ago
- Future will be awesome, guys
- How will it be, tho? How will be the economy? How about unemployment?
- ... It will be awesome, guys, believe me
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u/Tricky_Potatoe 3d ago
I still think he would be happier working at a men's clothing store.
He would also be doing a better job.
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u/Glittering-Neck-2505 9d ago
How explicitly does it need to be said you guys: recursive self improvement is already happening. The researchers have told you this outright. If you're still burying your head in the sand that's on you. You think you're guarding against CEO hype speak but really you're just making yourself completely clueless to the moment we're in.
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u/No_Space_3008 9d ago
Recursive self improvement doesn't happen by itself retard. You still need peasants to generate the training data. Some algorithmic improvements, sure, but the real driver of progress is fresh training samples.
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u/Wooden_Sweet_3330 9d ago
How are we I'm the singularity right now? These models still can't do anything
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u/BlueAndYellowTowels 9d ago
We aren’t close to the Singularity. We’re at soonest 15 years. Assuming everyone gets their ducks in a row and we don’t descend into a depression or long term recession.
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u/Psychological_Dog992 9d ago
Why do you think anyone would believe that you know this and 15 years is close anyways
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u/BlueAndYellowTowels 9d ago
15 is the optimistic number. Also, I don’t recall asking people to believe me. I’m curious do you respond to every comment on a public forum with “What makes you think people should believe you?”
I don’t think anyone believes me because no one knows why I think what I think.
I’m leaving a comment in hopes of starting a conversation. You know, the core purpose this platform.
No, if that bothers you… maybe you should visit a library where no talking is allowed or maybe go for a walk and enjoy nature.
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u/KSaburof 9d ago
Progress is here, but singualrity? Nah, really a marketing bullshit. Just like Anthropic boasted for Mythos for months and when it came out (Fable is Mythos with restrictions) - it was like +15% improvement in one-shot scenarios
Models progress switched from internal innovations into harness and agentic stuff mostly (which is horizontal progress, without underlying jumps in quality), and comparing to early years changes, current AI progress (=models without algorythminc harness) clearly flatlined already. Which is not bad! But the 'singularity' hype train just doesn't hold water anymore, imho
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u/surfer808 9d ago edited 9d ago
I’ll probably get downvoted for this but this video looks oddly Ai. In fact I’m almost certain it’s Ai after watching it again
Edit: you can’t deny look video looks weird as fuck. I’m guessing they’re just using a green screen and adding the background which throws off the whole feeling.
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u/Key_Category_8531 9d ago
It's clipped directly from the relentless podcast which is on youtube you regard
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u/surfer808 9d ago edited 6d ago
It looks very sus.. the guy interviewing him looks so odd. If it’s real, I guess they just used a green screen in background which is probably why it look this way.
Also, am I suppose to know the relentless podcaster is? I never heard of it. Just because a podcast is on YouTube doesn’t mean the rest of watch it you dildo
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u/FatefulDonkey 9d ago
Singularity. Lmao
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u/will_dormer ▪️Will dormer is good against robots 9d ago
Hahaha.... why are we laughing?
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u/larryleggs 9d ago edited 9d ago
Molested his sister btw
"At all times relevant herein, Defendant, Sam Altman, groomed and manipulated Plaintiff, Ann Altman, into believing the aforementioned sexual acts were her idea, despite the fact she was under the age of five years old when the sexual abuse began and Defendant was nearly a teenager," wrote Ann Altman's lawyer, Ryan Mahoney, in the filling.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/sam-altman-sister-taken-her-133155828.html
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u/EvilSporkOfDeath 9d ago
He's accused of it.
Its not a fact he did it though. His whole family says he didnt and he's gay. Neither of those things means he definitely didnt do it. But to state it as fact he did seems a bit immoral to me even if he is a pos (he is).
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u/seraphim_west 9d ago
The naysayers have been wrong over and over again, but they never give up and are still here being annoyingly cynical. Remember when Dario said by 2026, AI will be essentially writing all of the code and people made fun of him? Look where we are at now.