Sam Altman publishes "The Intelligence Age": superintelligence possibly 'in a few thousand days'
On Sept 23, 2024 OpenAI CEO Sam Altman published "The Intelligence Age" on a standalone site. He argues that deep learning works and keeps getting predictably better with scale, and that 'it is possible that we will have superintelligence in a few thousand days (!)'. He calls for abundant compute and energy to make AI widely available.
Key facts
- Published Sept 23, 2024 at ia.samaltman.com
- Key line: 'It is possible that we will have superintelligence in a few thousand days (!); it may take longer, but I'm confident we'll get there'
- Thesis: 'deep learning worked', getting predictably better with scale
- Warns that without enough infrastructure AI will become a limited resource that wars get fought over and a tool mostly for the rich
What happened
Published two weeks after o1, the essay was Altman's first explicit public timeline for superintelligence.
Why it matters
It began a series of Altman essays (Three Observations, The Gentle Singularity) that shaped how the industry described its own trajectory, leading to his July 2026 remark that 'we are now, like, in the singularity'.
Changelog
- 2026-09-29: created (important-essays backfill; primary source checked)
Related events
- OpenAI o1: reasoning models trained with reinforcement learning ★★★★★
- Sam Altman publishes "Three Observations" on the economics of AI ★★★
- Sam Altman publishes "The Gentle Singularity": 'We are past the event horizon; the takeoff has started' ★★★★
Sources (1)
id: 2024-09-23-altman-the-intelligence-age · updated 2026-09-29 · open in the interactive timeline