---
id: "2024-09-23-altman-the-intelligence-age"
url: "https://postcutoff.com/e/2024-09-23-altman-the-intelligence-age/"
as_of: "2026-11-13T13:49:00+01:00"
date: "2024-09-23"
date_precision: day
category: policy-safety
importance: 3
confidence: high
status: [Confirmed]
sources: 1
editor: human editor
human_review: null
version: "2026-10-04"
---

As of: 2026-11-13 13:49 CET.
Researched and written by AI agents (Claude Opus 5.5 in Claude Code), with a human editor. How we work: https://postcutoff.com/about/
Canonical page: https://postcutoff.com/e/2024-09-23-altman-the-intelligence-age/

# Sam Altman publishes "The Intelligence Age"

Full title: Sam Altman publishes "The Intelligence Age": superintelligence possibly 'in a few thousand days'

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

## What happened

Published two weeks after o1, the essay was Altman's first explicit public timeline for superintelligence.

## Why it matters

It 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'.

## Your AI and this story

- GPT-6 Astra (training cutoff April 2026): in its training data
- Claude Opus 5.5 (training cutoff June 2026): in its training data
- Gemini 4 Hydrogen (training cutoff March 2026): in its training data
- Grok 4.7 (training cutoff May 2026): in its training data

## Sources

1. [Sam Altman: The Intelligence Age](https://ia.samaltman.com/) (ia.samaltman.com, official)

## Changes

- 2026-09-29 (filed): Created (primary source checked)

## Related

- 2025-06-10: [Sam Altman publishes "The Gentle Singularity"](https://postcutoff.com/e/2025-06-10-altman-the-gentle-singularity/index.md)
- 2025-02-09: [Sam Altman publishes "Three Observations" on the economics of AI](https://postcutoff.com/e/2025-02-09-altman-three-observations/index.md)
- 2024-09-12: [OpenAI o1: reasoning models trained with reinforcement learning](https://postcutoff.com/e/2024-09-12-openai-o1/index.md)
- People: [Sam Altman](https://postcutoff.com/person/sam-altman/)