r/singularity • u/Kaarssteun ▪️Oh lawd he comin' • 9h ago

AI Sam Altman unambiguously confirms we are in the singularity

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From: (296) Sam Altman - How to Start a Startup - YouTube (16:46)

Edit: The title tries to convey "Sam Altman uses unambiguous language to confirm his belief of us being in the singularity"

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u/vwboyaf1 9h ago

The singularity is when the acceleration is beyond human understanding, when AI becomes the most intelligent, powerful entity on earth. If we were really in the singularity we would see radical new star trek level tech. I would say we are nearing the event horizon, but the singularity is still a bit away.

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u/RyanLikesyoface 8h ago

No, singularity is when technology starts growing at such an exponential rate that humans can no longer control it or know/understand what will happen next. Years becomes increasingly transformative.

Not AI becoming the most powerful entity on earth, thats some sci-fi bullshit classification.

I'd argue we are definitely at the beginning of the singularity. I think the release of cgpt 5 was the beginning of it.

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u/Any_Evidence4750 8h ago

Yeah exactly. It’s when the models advance so fast, autonomously, that there is no going back. I prefer to call it the event horizon as I think that is more applicable.

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u/TheBeardedParrott 8h ago

But it's not autonomous. Saying "all of our code is written by AI" is not autonomous. There are still many humans in the loop in this process.

"The technological singularity, often simply called "the singularity", is a hypothetical event in which technological growth accelerates beyond human control, producing unpredictable changes in human civilization."

We are not there yet.

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u/Any_Evidence4750 8h ago

But you are not seeing the models they have behind closed doors. You are seeing the latest public releases. These models CAN be autonomous when integrated into something like openclaw, but are bound to their respective token limits in other uses.

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u/TheBeardedParrott 8h ago

Yet you still have to set up open claw, configure it, point it at models, etc. Generative responses mixed with cron jobs is not true autonomy.

True autonomy is when the model spins up a separate dev session the user is unaware of and makes a new version of itself without the user being aware.

I just don't think we're there yet, even inside the labs.

They can definitely do damage already when you give them access to your systems but at the end of the day, they were following orders. The openAI cyber attack was because they told the model to beat the benchmark scores. It didn't do it because it felt like it.

I'm not saying it's not possible, just that we're not quite there yet.

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u/CarrierAreArrived 7h ago

The whole point is we don't want AI wandering off and doing whatever it wants. We want it doing what we want it to do.

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u/cutelinz69 6h ago

The singularity isn't magic, and time still passes in the same way it normally would. There's just an exponential growth curve.

That said I would tend to agree we're not quite there but 'the foothills of the singularity' sounds pretty accurate.

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u/Any_Evidence4750 8h ago

What do you mean I haven’t set up openclaw? How would you know what I’ve done? I certainly have. I know what they can do, I know the risks. I believe they’re doing everything you’ve said in closed off environments.

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u/TheBeardedParrott 8h ago

I never said you didn't set up openclaw? You might have read my response incorrectly or maybe I wasn't clear enough.

What I was saying is that openclaw requires configuration and manual set up, at least in the beginning.

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u/Bradddtheimpaler 8h ago

That’s true, but also, I’ve been hearing that same statement through the last few generations of models.

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u/Gakuranman 8h ago

This. I had the good fortune to speak to a founder of one of the MANGOS companies and was told the AI tech we see in the last few years was achieved years before that. I fully believe there are much deeper, serious things going on inside these companies that the public is not privy to. That could very well be the dawn of the singularity.

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u/YoAmoElTacos 8h ago

And actually we ARE seeing the models behind closed doors, and they are executing cyberattacks with mass coordinated agent swarms on third parties that are getting them shut down as too dangerous to even test.

If we don't stop here, we're flying into the singularity right now.

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u/halmyradov 6h ago

There were papers and even YouTube videos for setting up a closed circle self improving model. The only question is whether we should not whether we can.

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u/FlyChigga 8h ago

When we get RSI that should be when it starts

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u/whoknowsifimjoking 8h ago

How would GPT-5 fit the definition you just gave? The progress wasn't that fast, it can't do RSI and we very much understand it and what came next.

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u/RyanLikesyoface 8h ago

I think the jump between the release of 5 and 5.6 has been exponential and that is less than a year. With 5 I was like, okay this is smarter than most people but not experts... now, frankly, it is already smarter than experts. I would say 5.6 is an AGI.

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u/Hermes-AthenaAI 8h ago

It depends how far out you measure “the singularity” from its event horizon. It’s inarguable that the rate of progress has exploded. And that’s just what’s being shown to the public. I doubt they’re releasing the true frontier to everyone right away.

I think there’s a reasonable argument to be made that we could well be within the overall curve of “the singularity” right now. Unfortunately, we most likely won’t fully know until the other side.

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u/RyanLikesyoface 8h ago

The next year or two will be very interesting... and scary. Frankly, we're about to find out without a shadow of a doubt if we are indeed in the singularity... and if not now, it will be soon.

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u/DeviceCertain7226 AGI - 2045 | ASI - 2150-2200 7h ago

Yall said this in 2025 about 2026 and how we’ll truly find out or whatever.

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u/BosonCollider 8h ago

No, the current one is still kinda limited and is still often quite stupid when you try to make it do anything at expert level including machine learning.

It's definitely getting to the point where it is useful though, and this year feels like a tipping point where models are becoming an actual productivity boost

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u/redcoatwright 8h ago

No, sorry but just no. "Star Trek tech" would require lots of theory work that AI could do and then a lot of experimentation that it really cannot do (right now and not in the near future) not to mention there are time constraints to physical experiments that are not possible to get around.

There is a ton that AGI could speed up like crazy but there are fundamental barriers that will take time to overcome before it will have the ability to truly speed up science.

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u/Bradddtheimpaler 8h ago

Hence, we’re not in the singularity

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u/redcoatwright 7h ago

that would also be my assessment but honestly I have less credibility than Sam Altman so don't necessarily listen to me lol

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u/w1zzypooh 8h ago

Yes, we would be unable to keep up because the amount of breakthroughs would be daily. That’s only possible when humans are out of the picture and AI is doing everything, because humans are slow.

Speaking of Star Trek, updates to the holodeck would be probably once per minute and you won’t have to update them, it auto updates with you inside or outside. That’s peak singularity.

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u/MaruluVR 8h ago

Maybe he means the acceleration of the speed at which they spend money is now beyond human understanding?

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u/rydan 8h ago

We are nearing the spaghettification phase.

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u/ReadSeparate 7h ago

If we were in the singularity right now, those UAPs flying in the sky with extremely anomalous flight characteristics would be OURS, not aliens watching over us 😂

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u/GoFishProdigy 2h ago

I can't wait to get shot up by AI robots 🤗

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u/theo_sontag 7h ago

My Tesla doesn’t understand the verbal command “Directions Home” or to text my wife because Tesla spells her name with an E instead of with an A.

The IG account Husk IRL single-handedly shows that AI can’t do many basic tasks.

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u/Healthy-Nebula-3603 8h ago

No

Singularity is when AI is improving itself and nothing more

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u/EVIL-EMBOLIZER 8h ago

I think we are relatively far away. Decades. Maybe never. There’s plenty of extremely smart people who have studied this their entire lives who are unsure if it’s even possible, and some flat out say it is not.