What you need to know
- OpenAI CEO Sam Altman recently admitted that ChatGPT's Voice Mode tricked him into thinking AI is a real person.
- The CEO claims AI systems will become more capable as new features and improvements continue to ship, making them more natural to interact with.
- Altman admitted superintelligence could be a few thousand days from OpenAI's doorstep, however, it will require "$7 trillion and many years to build 36 semiconductor plants and additional data centers" to bring the vision to life.
OpenAI's flagship products like ChatGPT and next-gen AI models like OpenAI-o1 continue to scale greater heights with new features and improvements, to the extent that the latter may potentially render coding dead as a career path for the next generation. High-profile tech leaders like NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang and Amazon Web Services CEO Matt Garman share the same sentiments.
Speaking of ChatGPT, OpenAI recently shipped its long-awaited Advanced Voice Mode feature to ChatGPT Plus and Teams users. For context, the feature ships with five new voices, custom instructions, improved conversational speed, smoothness, and accents in select foreign languages.
It's worth noting that the feature isn't yet available in the EU, the UK, Switzerland, Iceland, Norway, and Liechtenstein. You'll also need a $20 monthly subscription to access the feature. While it remains unclear whether the feature will ship to broad availability, OpenAI may be reluctant to ship it because of the EU AI Act's stringent policies, prohibiting AI systems that can recognize a user's emotions.
- Is AI all hype? DeepSeek tumbles to #51 on Apple's App Store, weeks after dethroning ChatGPT as the most downloaded free AI app in the US — OpenAI CEO Sam Altman already promised to "obviously deliver better models"
- Sam Altman admits OpenAI has been on "the wrong side of history," citing a dire need for a different open-source strategy: "Not everyone at OpenAI shares this view, and it's also not our current highest priority"
The feature was initially supposed to ship to general availability in June. However, the date was delayed to July over safety concerns, including improving its ability to detect and refuse harmful content.
Does ChatGPT's Advanced Voice Mode sound too human-like?
A few weeks into Advanced Voice Mode being available to the public, the reception across social media indicates that the feature is borderline human-like, and even OpenAI CEO Sam Altman seemingly agrees.
In a short clip shared on r/OpenAI's subreddit on Reddit, Altman admits that ChatGPT's Voice Mode was the first time he was tricked into thinking AI was a real person.
Sam Altman says ChatGPT's Voice mode was the first time he was tricked into thinking an AI was a person, and he says "please" and "thank you" to ChatGPT because "you never know" from r/OpenAI
According to the CEO:
"I kind of still say 'please' to ChatGPT, but in Voice Mode, I couldn't use the normal niceties. I was so convinced, like, Argh, it might be a real person. And obviously, I was just hacking some circuit in my brain, that I really felt it with Voice Mode and I sort of still do."
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman claims that AI systems and models will likely improve over time. "I think this is more of an example of a more general thing that we're gonna start facing, which is as these AI systems become more and more capable and as we try to make them as natural as possible to interact with," Altman added.
In a recent blog post by Sam Altman, Superintelligence might only be "a few thousand days away." The CEO outlined an audacious plan to edge OpenAI closer to this vision of "$7 trillion and many years to build 36 semiconductor plants and additional data centers."
Coincidentally, OpenAI just closed its funding round, where it raised $6.6 from investors, including Microsoft and NVIDIA, pushing its market capitalization to $157 billion. Interestingly, the AI firm reportedly pleaded with investors for exclusive funding, leaving competitors like Former OpenAI Chief Scientist Illya Sustever's SuperIntelligence Inc. and Elon Musk's xAI to fend for themselves. However, investors are still confident that OpenAI is on the right trajectory to prosperity, potentially becoming the world's dominant AI company worth trillions of dollars.
🎃The best early Black Friday deals🦃
- 💻HP Victus 15.6 (Radeon RX 6550M) | $479.99 at Best Buy (Save $320!)
- 📺Amazon Fire TV Stick | $24.99 at Amazon (Save $25!)
- 💻Lenovo IdeaPad 1 (Ryzen 5) | $329.99 at Best Buy (Save $250!)
- 🕹️Xbox Game Pass Ultimate (3-months) | $29.49 at CDKeys (Save $21!)
- 💻Samsung Galaxy Book4 Edge (X Elite) | $899.99 at Best Buy (Save $450!)
- 🕹️Starfield Premium Upgrade (Xbox & PC) | $28.29 at CDKeys (Save $7!)
- 💻ASUS Vivobook S 15 (X Elite) | $975 at Amazon (Save $325!)
- 🕹️Final Fantasy XVI (PC, Steam) | $43.49 at CDKeys (Save $7!)
- 💻Dell XPS 14 (Core Ultra 7) | $1,449.99 at Dell (Save $550!)
- 🎮 Seagate Xbox Series X|S Card (2TB) | $249.99 at Best Buy (Save $110!)
- 💻Dell Inspiron 14 2-in-1 (Ryzen 5) | $499.99 at Best Buy (Save $230!)
- 🕹️Hi-Fi RUSH (PC, Steam) | $8.59 at CDKeys (Save $21!)
- 💻Lenovo Yoga 9i 14 (Core Ultra 7) | $1,099.99 at Best Buy (Save $350!)
- 🕹️Days Gone (PC, Steam) | $12.09 at CDKeys (Save $38!)
