# Superintelligence may not make society feel different

Markdown copy of https://realalpha.app/s/superintelligence-may-not-make-society-feel-different/ on Real Alpha, the best minutes from long interviews with the people building AI. Cite and link the page, not this copy.

- Speaker: [Sam Altman](https://realalpha.app/builders/sam-altman/) · Sam Altman is CEO of OpenAI. · Co-founded OpenAI and has led it since 2019, overseeing ChatGPT's launch; formerly president of Y Combinator.
- Host: [Jack Altman](https://realalpha.app/people/jack-altman/) · General partner, Benchmark · Co-founded Lattice and ran it until 2023, then started his fund, Alt Capital.
- Show: Uncapped
- Episode: [Sam Altman on The Future of AI | Ep. 13](https://realalpha.app/v/mZUG0pr5hBo/), Jun 17, 2025
- Moment: 8:22 to 12:37 of the episode (4 min), playing on https://realalpha.app/s/superintelligence-may-not-make-society-feel-different/; the episode from there: https://realalpha.app/v/mZUG0pr5hBo/?t=502

## Quote

> “somehow it's that we build legitimate super intelligence and it **doesn't make the world much better** it doesn't change things as much as it sounds like it should”
> — [Sam Altman](https://realalpha.app/builders/sam-altman/) at [9:07](https://realalpha.app/v/mZUG0pr5hBo/?t=547) · Uncapped

## Takeaways

1. Altman says the technical path to highly capable AI is becoming clearer.
2. Society may not get the benefits people expect from superintelligence.
3. People may keep crediting humans even when AI does the work.

## About this segment

Sam Altman says he is more confident than ever that highly capable AI is within reach, but less sure society will benefit as much as expected. People may adapt to extraordinary changes without feeling transformed.

From “Sam Altman on The Future of AI | Ep. 13”, Jun 17, 2025. [Watch the full episode](https://realalpha.app/v/mZUG0pr5hBo/)

## Transcript

Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.

[8:26](https://realalpha.app/v/mZUG0pr5hBo/?t=506) Yeah. What what like if you're thinking about, you know, we're back here in 10 years having another conversation and we're like, did I do what we thought it would do? What metrics are you expecting? Like, is it that like the GDP growth curve has a kink in it? Is it that like life expectancy is up? Is it like there's less poverty? Is it something completely different? so every year before the last like maybe up until last year i would have said like hey i think this is going to go really far but it still seems like there's a lot that we've got to figure out i feel very confident at this point the most confident i've ever felt that we kind of like know what to do to get to incredible ai systems that are just super super capable if something goes wrong i would say like somehow it's that we build legitimate super intelligence and it doesn't

[9:16](https://realalpha.app/v/mZUG0pr5hBo/?t=556) make the world much better it doesn't change things as much as it sounds like it should how would that happen seems like a crazy thing to say yeah but like i don't know if i told you in 2020 maybe i did tell you like we're gonna make something like chat gpt and it's gonna be as smart as a phd student in most areas and we're gonna deploy it and you know a significant fraction of the world is gonna use it and kind of use it a lot maybe you would have believed that maybe you wouldn't have but conditioned on that i bet you would say okay if that happens the world looks more way more different than it does right now yeah so it's like we have this crazy thing yeah i mean there's this thing where it's like the turing test you know everybody's just went by yeah nobody really cared and yeah i don't know what explains that or the fact that you can like

[10:01](https://realalpha.app/v/mZUG0pr5hBo/?t=601) have this thing do these this amazing amazing stuff for you and you kind of live your life the same way you did two years ago yeah kind of work the same way you did two years ago do you Do you think that's possible that we have like crazy super intelligence that's like 400 IQ and we're still, that's still the case? I totally think that's possible. Wow. If it's off discovering new science for us, eventually society will figure out how to deal with that.

[10:24](https://realalpha.app/v/mZUG0pr5hBo/?t=624) But it may be very slow. Well, what's funny is if it looked like a co-pilot, you'd kind of still credit the PI at the lab who was using this, you know, 400 IQ agent behind it. I think you kind of will, no matter what. Humans are so wired to care about other humans. We need people in the story. You know, we need to talk about like that guy did that thing. Yeah. Or like made this decision or made this mistake or had, you know, just whatever.

[10:47](https://realalpha.app/v/mZUG0pr5hBo/?t=647) That's why I was surprised that you don't think if we had like a super accurately embodied robot that we wouldn't start to imprint some of that on that robot. I think we will find out. I may be wrong. I think we will have more of a relationship than we do now as the thing is more embodied. But I think we are so deeply hardwired to care about other people. And that is going to turn out to be pretty deep in biology.

[11:14](https://realalpha.app/v/mZUG0pr5hBo/?t=674) And if you know it's a robot, no matter how human like it seems in other ways, you're not going to care that much. That's that's speculation. So reasoning was like one of the components of intelligence that like sort of got figured out. is there like another thread going around like a topic of like agency or like some concept of like self-directedness like is that a thing the ability to work on a goal over a very long time with a lot of complicated steps along the way i think is maybe what you're going for yeah same thing and that is definitely something we're working on yeah what about the future sort of technical path would you say is now inevitable and what parts would you say you're still not sure which way it'll break i think we will get to extreme Smart and capable models, capable of discovering important new ideas, capable of automating huge amounts of work. But then I feel totally confused about what society looks like if that happens. So I'm like most interested in the capabilities questions. But I feel like maybe at this point, more people should be talking about like, how do we make sure society gets the value out of this? I think those questions have somehow become harder and less clear.

[12:26](https://realalpha.app/v/mZUG0pr5hBo/?t=746) I mean, this is a crazy statement that like we're going to solve the super intelligence, but maybe society still sucks. Yeah. Yeah, I can't tell if. It doesn't feel right to me, but like.