Sam Altman Speaks About AGI's Future; Says Cost Of AI To Fall 10x Every Year

The Super Bowl’s halftime show is one of the most coveted advertising spots for the biggest companies in the United States.

As a large part of the country’s population tunes in to watch the annual league championship game of the National Football League (NFL), businesses pour in millions of dollars to capture the attention of viewers of one of the most-watched single sporting events in the world.

We already reported about T-Mobile's “out-of-the-world" new service that was revealed through a 60-second spot during the halftime show.

Another advertiser using a 60-second spot was OpenAI, the undisputed (but recently challenged) leader of the artificial intelligence (AI) era.

In what was OpenAI’s first-ever television ad, the company decided it was a good idea to shell out around $14 million to tell roughly 130 million viewers through a commercial video that the company’s products are one of humanity’s greatest innovations. These innovations included the discovery of fire, the wheel, the moon landing, the internet, space exploration, and more, ultimately landing on ChatGPT.

Interestingly, the video didn’t contain any AI-generated imagery whatsoever.

Instead, OpenAI’s ad included animations created entirely by human artists. To be fair, the AI startup did use its text-to-video generator Sora to test out ideas and experiment with different camera treatments.

Developed under new CMO Kate Rouch, the advertisement “is a celebration of human creativity and an extension of human creativity.”

The idea was to enlighten people with the practical applications of OpenAI’s products.

“We want the message to feel relevant to the audience that is watching the Super Bowl, which includes tens of millions of people who have no familiarity with AI,” said Rouch.

Yet, the commercial didn’t mention anything about its endeavors and efforts towards AGI or superintelligence, which is at the core of OpenAI’s mission.

This was conveyed by OpenAI’s CEO Sam Altman through a blog post, which came hours before the Super Bowl ad.

“Our mission is to ensure that AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) benefits all of humanity,” is how the blog post began.


“Systems that start to point to AGI* are coming into view, and so we think it’s important to understand the moment we are in. AGI is a weakly defined term, but generally speaking we mean it to be a system that can tackle increasingly complex problems, at human level, in many fields.”

The asterisk (*) comes as OpenAI wants to pre-empt the silliness and risks that come with journalists misinterpreting or intentionally altering Altman’s words to get clicks with something silly or sensational.

The highlight of the blog included three observations Altman noted about AI.

First, a model’s intelligence is roughly equal to the resources used to train and run it.

Second, the cost of using AI falls about 10x every year, which in turn leads to more usage over time. This was also reflected in the 150x drop that was observed in the token cost from GPT-4 in early 2023 to GPT-4o in mid-2024.

Third, as intelligence increases at a steady, linear rate, its economic and societal benefits grow at a much faster, super-exponential rate.

“If these three observations continue to hold true, the impacts on society will be significant.”

The blog focused on the development of AI and what its future could look like—with changes that won’t happen overnight, but will revolutionize how we work, interact, communicate, and live in the long run, “seeping into all areas of the economy and society.”

These developments come on the eve of the Paris AI Action Summit to be held on February 10 and 11, 2025.

Do you think OpenAI’s Super Bowl halftime advertisement will help it gain popularity with people unfamiliar with its products and grow its user base?

Let us know in the comments below!