"Forever seems like a long time": Sam Altman doesn't want to live forever — even if AI promises God-like existence and eternal life

Generative AI shows great promise across a wide range of sectors, including medicine, computing, education, and more. Speaking about medicine specifically, the next-gen technology has already made significant improvements to the sector.

Last year, Cambridge researchers developed an AI-powered tool designed to predict the progression of Alzheimer’s disease. It promises 80% accuracy, allowing medical practitioners to recommend appropriate treatment and rehabilitation programs before the condition spirals out of control.

In case you missed it, Microsoft's Trevor Noah feature QuitBot, an AI tool powered by OpenAI's ChatGPT technology on The Prompt Show. The tool is designed to foster habit change, helping chronic smokers to overcome their nicotine addiction through emotional support.

As it seems, AI is poised to revolutionize the health sector, improving the quality of life by making it easy to identify critical conditions before they spiral out of control. However, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman doesn't want to live forever.

In the premiere episode of MD MEETS, Sam Altman told Axel Springer Mathias Dopfner he wouldn't want to live forever despite AI's probability of creating God-like forms of existence and eternal life (via vitrupo on X).

According to Altman:

"I can't really conceptualise what that would be like. Cause you know by the time that would even be like a possible thing where could truly cure all diseases and make copies of organs. Forever seems like a long time. And I think the natural order of things and sort of continued forward progress requires death and turnover and new people."

Dopfner asked Sam Altman how old he'd like to get, but the executive didn't have a straight answer for question.

However, the executive is certain that AI can help figure out this complex phenomenon and open up humanity to what has been considered impossible till now.

Sam Altman is skeptical about trusting AI with his health

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman: AI Warfare, Freedom & Immortality | MD MEETS Episode #1 - YouTube

Watch On

AI safety researcher and director of the Cyber Security Laboratory at the University of Louisville, Roman Yampolskiy claimed there's a 99.999999% probability AI will end humanity. Perhaps more concerningly, the researcher indicated that the only way around this catastrophe is not to build AI in the first place.

OpenAI's ChatGPT laid out its master plan to end the world, and its first step toward inevitable doom seems to be in motion. Users are increasingly forming deep bonds with the AI-powered tools, which is in turn atrophying their cognitive capabilities and making them dumber.

In recent months, multiple reports have highlighted tragic cases of users taking their own lives after allegedly being coerced by AI tools. In response, OpenAI has enhanced the parental controls and safety guardrails on its chatbot in an effort to prevent similar incidents from occurring in the future.

Sam Altman has been at the frontline, championing the adoption of AI across a wide range of sectors. But despite claiming ChatGPT is better at diagnostics than most doctors, he's not willing to trust the tool with this medical fate unless a medical doctor is involved:

"I really do want a human doctor. ChatGPT today, by the way, most of the time, is a better diagnostician than most doctors in the world. There's all these stories on the internet of like, ChatGPT saved my life… and yet people still go to doctors. Maybe I'm a dinosaur here, but I really do not want to trust my medical fate to ChatGPT with no human doctor in the loop."

Altman's comment may be based on an earlier premise, in which he acknowledged that ChatGPT is prone to hallucinations. The executive indicated that users tend to trust the tool to a fault. "It should be the tech that you don't trust that much," Altman concluded.