He is smart. He senses that the tide is turning. So he starts changing the messaging.

AGI was always just a vehicle to collect more money. AI people will have to find a new way now.

Like always, people like him only say the things that help them reach their current goal. It doesn’t matter if there is any truth to what they say. Moving goalposts, hyperbolic rhetoric, manipulative marketing to reach a large audience on an emotion level is the name of the game

Elon Musk made this way of doing business popular and now every hotshot tech CEO does it…But I guess it works, so people will continue doing it since there are no repercussions.

I am shocked, shocked to hear that Sam is backpedalling this.

going with the musk pattern or over commit, under deliver, then gas light the rubes.

I’m a bit surprised by some of the comments I’m reading, which tend to frame Altman’s words as nothing more than corporate self-interest. Of course, it’s true that in his position he has to speak in ways that align with his company’s goals. That’s perfectly natural, and in fact it would be odd if he didn’t.

But that doesn’t mean there’s no truth in what he says. A company like his doesn’t choose its direction on a whim, these decisions are the product of intense internal debate, strategic analysis, and careful weighing of trade-offs. If there’s a shift in course, it’s unlikely to be just a passing fancy or a PR move detached from reality.

Personally, I’ve always thought that the pursuit of AGI as the goal was misguided. Human intelligence is extraordinary, but it is constrained by the physical and biological limitations of the "host machine" (not just the human brain). These are limits we cannot change. Artificial intelligence, on the other hand, has no such inherent ceiling. It can develop far beyond the capabilities of our own minds, and perhaps that’s where our focus should be.