Doubling Lifespans and Superintelligence: AI CEOs Are Saying Some Wild Stuff. Is Any of It True?

The AI revolution has been awash in hype for years, but it’s now truly on the cusp of sparking global transformation—if you take recent CEO and investor statements as gospel. The World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, has offered a platform for leaders of AI’s biggest startups to wax lyrical about the industry’s bright prospects. Anthropic CEO Dario Amoedi jumped at the chance to laud AI’s power far beyond chatbots, saying that AI could allow humans to double their lifespans within the next decade. “If you think about what we might expect humans to accomplish in an area like biology in 100 years, I think a doubling of the human lifespan is not at all crazy. And then if AI is able to accelerate that, we may be able to get that in five to 10 years,” he said at a panel last week called Technology in the World. Amoedi also told reporters that superintelligence, or artificial general intelligence (AGI), is a feasible prospect by 2027. For many AI evangelists, the idea of building AI that possesses more knowledge than the collective sum of humanity is a pet topic and holy grail. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman wrote in September that such a milestone is within the industry’s grasp: “It is possible that we will have superintelligence in a few thousand days,” Altman claimed. The World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, has offered a platform for leaders of AI’s biggest startups to wax lyrical about the industry’s bright prospects. Anthropic CEO Dario Amoedi jumped at the chance to laud AI’s power far beyond chatbots, saying that AI could allow humans to double their lifespans within the next decade. “If you think about what we might expect humans to accomplish in an area like biology in 100 years, I think a doubling of the human lifespan is not at all crazy. And then if AI is able to accelerate that, we may be able to get that in five to 10 years,” he said at a panel last week called Technology in the World. Amoedi also told reporters that superintelligence, or artificial general intelligence (AGI), is a feasible prospect by 2027. For many AI evangelists, the idea of building AI that possesses more knowledge than the collective sum of humanity is a pet topic and holy grail. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman wrote in September that such a milestone is within the industry’s grasp: “It is possible that we will have superintelligence in a few thousand days,” Altman claimed. BY SAM BLUM @SAMMBLUM