But there is no proof more energy == more intelligence. In some areas I am smarter than the best ChatGPT model and my energy source is Taco Bell double deckers. Clearly there is a lot of low hanging fruit for efficiency before needing to encompass the entire sun and suck it dry of energy. It's an absurd thing to suggest. It's exactly the type of thing a conman would suggest. Something cool, fantastic and completely impossible to actually implement.

Because we are talking about likely outcomes, not optimizing for one tho to the exclusion of all else. Even if AGI is right around the corner (which is a pretty low percentage bet these days) cost alone would prevent such an outcome from being likely. Altman knows this, but being reasonable rarely sells.

If he really thinks the shortest path to building a synthetic brain is to build an entire Dyson sphere I would submit his bottleneck is the algorithm, not energy.

i.e. A prophet for profit