Altman predicts ChatGPT will soon surpass all human conversations

Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, predicts ChatGPT will soon have more daily conversations than all humans combined, as the AI chatbot continues its explosive growth trajectory. The OpenAI leader made these remarks during a dinner with journalists in San Francisco, addressing recent criticism of GPT-5 while outlining his vision for trillions in AI infrastructure spending to maintain the company’s competitive edge.

What you should know: Altman believes ChatGPT’s usage will reach unprecedented scale in the near future, fundamentally changing how humans interact with AI.

• “If you project our growth forward, pretty soon billions of people a day will be talking to ChatGPT,” Altman said during the dinner.
• “ChatGPT will be having more conversations, maybe, than all human words put together, at some point.”
• This projection comes as ChatGPT, launched in November 2022, became the fastest-growing tech product in history.

The GPT-5 backlash: OpenAI’s latest model launch faced user criticism over personality changes, forcing the company to quickly reverse course on restricting access to the previous model.

• Some users felt GPT-5 had a less friendly and supportive personality compared to its predecessor.
• OpenAI initially stopped offering access to GPT-4o alongside the new release but reversed this decision after user complaints.
• Altman acknowledged the misstep, saying the company failed to realize how the model’s tone change would affect consumers.

What’s coming next: OpenAI plans significant product customization to accommodate diverse user needs and use cases.

• “There will have to be a very different kind of product offering to accommodate the extremely wide diversity of use cases and people,” Altman explained.
• More customization options will be rolled out to ChatGPT in the near future.
• “I think it’s unreasonable to expect a single model personality or style to work for all of that,” he added regarding the platform’s massive scale.

The AI bubble reality: Altman acknowledged that AI is currently in a bubble but argued this doesn’t diminish the technology’s transformative potential.

• “When bubbles happen, smart people get overexcited about a kernel of truth,” he said.
• He compared the current AI boom to historical bubbles like the dotcom era, noting that “tech was really important, the internet was a really big deal” despite the bubble.
• Altman expects some big AI investments won’t pan out, similar to failed internet infrastructure investments during the dotcom boom.

Trillion-dollar spending plans: OpenAI anticipates massive infrastructure investments that will dwarf current spending levels, despite expected economic criticism.

• “OpenAI will likely spend trillions of dollars on data centers alone in the ‘not very distant future,'” Altman stated.
• “And you should expect a bunch of economists to wring their hands and be like, ‘oh, this is so crazy, it’s so reckless’ … And we’ll just be like, ‘you know what? Let us do our thing.'”
• When asked about funding sources, Altman suggested innovative financial instruments: “I suspect we can design a very interesting new kind of financial instrument for financing compute that the world has not yet figured out.”

Financial outlook: OpenAI’s valuation continues climbing as the company pursues artificial general intelligence (AGI), a theoretical form of AI that matches or exceeds human cognitive abilities across all domains.

• The company raised $40 billion in March, reaching a $300 billion valuation.
• A rumored stock sale for employees could push the valuation to $500 billion.
• “Someone is going to lose a phenomenal amount of money, we don’t know who, and a lot of people are going to make a phenomenal amount of money,” Altman said.
• Despite the risks, he believes “this will be a huge net win for the economy.”