{"schema":"postcutoff/event@1","as_of":"2026-11-13T13:49:00+01:00","url":"https://postcutoff.com/e/2024-09-23-altman-the-intelligence-age/","md":"https://postcutoff.com/e/2024-09-23-altman-the-intelligence-age/index.md","disclosure":{"written_by":"AI agents (Claude Opus 5.5 in Claude Code)","editor":"human editor","policy":"https://postcutoff.com/about/"},"license":null,"id":"2024-09-23-altman-the-intelligence-age","date":"2024-09-23","date_precision":"day","short_title":"Sam Altman publishes \"The Intelligence Age\"","deck":"Superintelligence possibly 'in a few thousand days'","takeaway":"On Sept 23, 2024 OpenAI CEO Sam Altman published \"The Intelligence Age\" on a standalone site.","category":"policy-safety","category_label":"Policy & safety","importance":3,"confidence":"high","status":{"key":"confirmed","labels":["Confirmed"]},"sources":[{"n":1,"title":"Sam Altman: The Intelligence Age","url":"https://ia.samaltman.com/","type":"official","group":"primary","domain":"ia.samaltman.com"}],"official":1,"filed":"2026-09-29","updated":"2026-09-29","orgs":["OpenAI"],"title":"Sam Altman publishes \"The Intelligence Age\": superintelligence possibly 'in a few thousand days'","summary":"On Sept 23, 2024 OpenAI CEO Sam Altman published \"The Intelligence Age\" on a standalone site. He argues that deep learning works and keeps getting predictably better with scale, and that 'it is possible that we will have superintelligence in a few thousand days (!)'. He calls for abundant compute and energy to make AI widely available.","key_facts":["Published Sept 23, 2024 at ia.samaltman.com","Key line: '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'","Thesis: 'deep learning worked', getting predictably better with scale","Warns that without enough infrastructure AI will become a limited resource that wars get fought over and a tool mostly for the rich"],"key_numbers":[],"tags":["essay","superintelligence","agi-timelines"],"science":null,"body_md":"## What happened\n\nPublished two weeks after o1, the essay was Altman's first explicit public timeline for superintelligence.\n\n## Why it matters\n\nIt began a series of Altman essays (Three Observations, The Gentle Singularity) that shaped how the industry described its own trajectory, leading to his July 2026 remark that 'we are now, like, in the singularity'.","disputed":[],"related":[{"id":"2025-06-10-altman-the-gentle-singularity","url":"https://postcutoff.com/e/2025-06-10-altman-the-gentle-singularity/","date":"2025-06-10","date_precision":"day","short_title":"Sam Altman publishes \"The Gentle Singularity\"","deck":"'We are past the event horizon; the takeoff has started'","takeaway":"Its 2026 prediction of AI systems producing novel insights is now checkable against the 2026 wave of AI mathematics and science results (for example the Navier–Stokes and open-problems claims).","category":"policy-safety","category_label":"Policy & safety","importance":4,"confidence":"high","status":{"key":"confirmed","labels":["Confirmed"]},"sources":3,"official":1,"filed":"2026-09-29","updated":"2026-09-29","orgs":["OpenAI"]},{"id":"2025-02-09-altman-three-observations","url":"https://postcutoff.com/e/2025-02-09-altman-three-observations/","date":"2025-02-09","date_precision":"day","short_title":"Sam Altman publishes \"Three Observations\" on the economics of AI","deck":null,"takeaway":"It became a frequently cited framing for AI cost curves and investment logic in 2025–2026.","category":"policy-safety","category_label":"Policy & safety","importance":3,"confidence":"high","status":{"key":"confirmed","labels":["Confirmed"]},"sources":2,"official":2,"filed":"2026-09-29","updated":"2026-09-29","orgs":["OpenAI"]},{"id":"2024-09-12-openai-o1","url":"https://postcutoff.com/e/2024-09-12-openai-o1/","date":"2024-09-12","date_precision":"day","short_title":"OpenAI o1: reasoning models trained with reinforcement learning","deck":null,"takeaway":"Opened the 'reasoning model' era and a new scaling axis (test-time compute); every major lab followed within months.","category":"model-release","category_label":"Model releases","importance":5,"confidence":"high","status":{"key":"confirmed","labels":["Confirmed"]},"sources":2,"official":2,"filed":"2026-09-29","updated":"2026-09-29","orgs":["OpenAI"]}],"people":[{"id":"sam-altman","name":"Sam Altman","url":"https://postcutoff.com/person/sam-altman/"}],"posts":[],"videos":[],"models":[],"changes":[{"date":"2026-09-29","type":"filed","text":"Created (primary source checked)"}],"provenance":{"agents":[{"model":"Claude Opus 5.5","maker":"Anthropic","tool":"Claude Code"}],"filed":"2026-09-29","run":null,"sources_read":null,"updated":"2026-09-29","human_review":null,"version":{"date":"2026-10-04"}},"gaps":[{"model_id":"gpt-6-astra","name":"GPT-6 Astra","cutoff":"2026-04","days_after":null,"in_training_data":true},{"model_id":"claude-opus-5-5","name":"Claude Opus 5.5","cutoff":"2026-06","days_after":null,"in_training_data":true},{"model_id":"gemini-4-hydrogen","name":"Gemini 4 Hydrogen","cutoff":"2026-03","days_after":null,"in_training_data":true},{"model_id":"grok-4-7","name":"Grok 4.7","cutoff":"2026-05","days_after":null,"in_training_data":true}],"short_url":null}