Sam Altman on how he imagines the future of AI: OpenAI has a fundamental belief in ...

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has said that the future of AI can resemble a basic service that people use everyday, similar to water or electricity. Speaking at BlackRock’s US Infrastructure Summit last week, Altman explained how he believes AI could eventually be delivered as a widely available resource that users access on demand. “We see a future where intelligence is a utility, like electricity or water, and people buy it from us on a meter and use it for whatever they want to use it for,” Altman said, adding the AI company has a “fundamental belief in abundance of intelligence”.

“Fundamentally our business and I think the business of every other model provider is going to look like selling tokens,” Altman said. “One of the most important things in the future is that we make intelligence, to borrow an old phrase from the energy industry that didn’t quite work: ‘Too cheap to meter',” he added.

Data centre expansion challenges

The tech industry has been investing heavily in building new data centres to meet rising demand for AI services. Tech firms have been pouring ‌billions ⁠of dollars into data centers to power generative AI services such as ChatGPT and Copilot, which require huge amounts of computing power. However, financing these projects can be difficult because of the high costs involved.

OpenAI recently stepped back from part of a planned expansion of its Stargate data centre project in Texas after negotiations dragged over financing, as per a Bloomberg report.

Debate over future AI infrastructure

Some executives have previously suggested that government support could play a role in financing large AI infrastructure projects. In earlier remarks, OpenAI executives said that the scale of investment required for AI development could eventually involve government participation.

Sam Altman has previously said the government could act as a financial backstop for large technology investments. “Given the magnitude of what I expect AI’s economic impact to look like, I do think the government ends up as the insurer of last resort,” he has said in earlier comments.