SoftBank CEO: AI is designing itself, superintelligence may come in 2 years

SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son said in a CNBC interview that OpenAI is advancing "AI designing AI," meaning AI models are already involved in designing future models. He believes this trend will expand to other major models, making it hard for human engineers to design stronger models alone.

Son previously defined ASI as AI 10,000 times smarter than humans. He had predicted ASI would arrive in 10 years, but now says that was too conservative—the real timeline has shortened to 2 years. OpenAI said in February that its GPT-5.3 Codex model was the first to "participate in creating itself."

Son also said he uses ChatGPT 2-3 hours daily and thinks it's already smarter than him in most subjects. He expects AI to surpass humans in 70% to 80% of subjects within a few years.