Quote of the day by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman: 'There's no way to get there without a breakthrough' — a blunt reality check on the path to superintelligent AI

Quote of the day by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman: 'There's no way to get there without a breakthrough' — a blunt reality check on the path to superintelligent AI
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Quote of the day by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman: 'There's no way to get there without a breakthr
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Quote of the day by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman: 'There's no way to get there without a breakthrough' — a blunt reality check on the path to superintelligent AI
TechRadar
Keumars Afifi-Sabet
Thu, August 20, 2026 at 10:00 PM UTC
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Thu, August 20, 2026 at 10:00 PM UTC
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Credit: Getty Images / Tomohiro Ohsumi / Stringer
AI is capable of impressive things – or, at least, it's capable of accomplishing many tasks that were previously unthinkable before ChatGPT burst onto the scene in 2022. That said, many question whether large language models (LLMs) represent a coherent path toward a meaningful improvement in the technology so that it rivals human intelligence.
Lacking in energy
The OpenAI CEO Sam Altman was speaking on the topic of energy production at a
Bloomberg
event at the World Economic Forum's annual meeting in Davos.
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Quote of the day
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.
His comments highlighted the near-unfathomable demand for energy that the ongoing AI buildout will demand. Data centers are expected to consume roughly 945 TWh of electricity globally by 2030 – primarily driven by AI demand – according to the
International Energy Agency (IEA)
. This represents 3% of total consumption.
Many expect that figure to be much higher, but the world doesn't currently have the necessary infrastructure to generate that much electricity. That's why Altman is banking on breakthroughs like fusion energy emerging in the coming years.
The AI bottleneck
AI development has gone through many ups and downs over decades, including two AI winters in which research funding dried up a