OpenAI CEO: AI Will Become a Utility Like Electricity or Water, Charged by Usage

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman recently stated that artificial intelligence will eventually become a basic utility like electricity or water, charged by usage. At the BlackRock Infrastructure Summit in Washington DC, he mentioned that tech companies are building a future of on-demand intelligence, with business models similar to selling Tokens (the unit of measurement for AI to process data).

Altman pointed out that computing power determines who can use AI, and demand continues to rise. If computing power needs are not met, services will either be interrupted or prices will soar, leading to AI usage being skewed toward the wealthy. Major tech companies will invest hundreds of billions of dollars in computing power this year; the world will need over 10 yottaflops of computing power in the next five years (10,000 times that of 2022), but energy and infrastructure are bottlenecks.