(OPINION) CHATGPT, a groundbreaking artificially intelligent (AI) chatbot, will be smarter than any human on Earth “in a few thousand days”, according to its creator. It will be like the dawn of the internet – on steroids.

In a personal blog post titled “The Intelligence Age”, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman wrote: “It is possible that we will have superintelligence in a few thousand days (!); it may take longer, but I’m confident we’ll get there.

“How did we get to the doorstep of the next leap in prosperity? In three words: deep learning worked.”

Artificial superintelligence is a hypothetical machine learning system with an intellectual scope beyond the smartest, and most gifted humans on Earth.

University of Oxford philosopher Nick Bostrom defines machine superintelligence as “any intellect that greatly exceeds the cognitive performance of humans in virtually all domains of interest”.

OpenAI only unveiled ChatGPT in November 2022. Yet the chatbot’s launch has had a profound influence on the evolution of AI.

“In the next couple of decades, we will be able to do things that would have seemed like magic to our grandparents,” Altman continued.

Altman envisions a future where every person will have a “personal AI team, full of virtual experts” to help us complete tasks more efficiently.

Superintelligent machines may also help humans learn skills they couldn’t before, like becoming fluent in a new language with the help of an on-hand virtual tutor.

He suggests AI models will “soon” serve as personal assistants who carry out specific tasks on our behalf, in a real hands-off approach towards human autonomy.