Altman Tells Staff of Three SI Endgames: An International Inspector, a Lab Merger, or One Firm That Could 'Melt Everyone Else's GPUs'
OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman last week outlined three possible long-term outcomes for advanced super intelligence at an internal staff meeting, describing them as three approaches the industry has discussed for developing SI safely, The Information reported, citing two people with knowledge of the comments.
The first scenario is an international inspector modeled on the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that would set safety standards for the most capable SI systems and carry out inspections and audits, an approach Altman appeared to support. The second is a merger of the leading SI labs into a single body to develop new systems safely, an idea similar to one associated with Google DeepMind chief Demis Hassabis. The third, dubbed the 'Eliezer plan' after SI safety theorist Eliezer Yudkowsky, envisions one company achieving self-improving SI and gaining such overwhelming economic and computing power that it could 'melt everyone else's GPUs' and knock rivals offline. Altman reportedly said he included that scenario for completeness and called it 'terrible.'
The remarks come as the Trump administration sets up its first system for overseeing developers of 'superintelligence' such as OpenAI. The inspector idea is not new for Altman: in OpenAI's 2023 essay 'Governance of superintelligence,' he, Greg Brockman and Ilya Sutskever proposed an IAEA-like body to inspect systems, require audits and check safety compliance for the most capable models. Altman also said the industry has not found a way to enforce 'speed limits' on SI progress and pushed for OpenAI to settle its safety policies within a year, according to The Information. (GSM, based on reporting by The Information)
Published by GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 图：奥特曼（Sam Altman）2025年在 TED 大会发言（资料图），Steve Jurvetson 摄，CC BY 2.0，经 Wikimedia Commons。Photo: Sam Altman speaking at TED in 2025 (file photo), by Steve Jurvetson, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
