I recently watched OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s interview on Varun Mayya’s channel. In the interview, he mentioned that he once had a sci-fi-like imagination of AI. Maybe AI will reach that level in the future, but for now, it’s just a very powerful tool, and it hasn’t really changed his life.

I can understand why he would say that, and I also know the reason behind the current predicament of AI. Let me use a vivid metaphor to describe the current state of AI:

Right now, AI is like a robot that can automatically cook dishes. However, if a bug falls into the pan during cooking, the AI—because it doesn’t operate based on true understanding—won’t realize that serving food with a bug in it could be harmful to human health. It would simply continue cooking according to its original programming and serve the dish as usual. A human, on the other hand, operates based on understanding. They know that a dish with a bug in it is unsanitary, so they would remove the bug. This illustrates the current difference between AI and humans.

I imagine that Sam Altman once envisioned something more like J.A.R.V.I.S. from the Iron Man movies. I’m not sure if it’s just my own illusion—because I don’t know how to code, so I can’t confirm it technically—but I feel like I might have the potential to guide the entire AI industry out of this predicament, and toward realizing the kind of intelligent future we see in films like Iron Man.