OpenAI CEO admitted that the US is only slightly ahead of China in AI

The US Senate held hearings on the situation in global competition in the field of artificial intelligence. One of the key speakers was Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI. Altman stated directly: “We believe that OpenAI has the best models in the world. Nevertheless, it is very difficult to say how far ahead of China we are, but I would say… not by much.” A frank admission, it should be noted.

Altman paid special attention to the Chinese company DeepSeek, which has achieved 2 significant successes. First, they created a powerful open-source model. Second, their application at one point became more downloaded than ChatGPT. Altman noted that so far DeepSeek has not surpassed ChatGPT as the main consumer artificial intelligence. But if this happened, the consequences would be negative for American technological leadership.

Altman also shared his vision of the long-term prospects for the development of artificial intelligence. According to him, “ultimately, the cost of artificial intelligence will equal the cost of energy. Robots can create chips, optimize networks, but an electron is an electron. Ultimately, intelligence will scale as much as the energy grid allows.”

Concluding his speech, the head of OpenAI made a bold statement: “Soon in human history, great changes will occur. These systems are capable of things that we cannot even imagine.”

Interestingly, about the future. The limiting factor for the development of artificial intelligence may not be so much technological potential or the availability of advanced chips. But the availability of energy resources. Countries with developed energy infrastructure and access to cheap energy will get an additional advantage. But only if they also have chips.