The promise and peril of AGI

Artificial general intelligence (AGI) could dramatically raise global living standards but also threatens mass unemployment and social unrest, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman warned in a blog post. Altman emphasized the need to navigate massive risks to ensure AGI empowers humanity.

NEW DELHI — The prospect of artificial general intelligence AGI — systems capable of performing any human cognitive task — has inspired both hope and anxiety. While AGI could usher in an unprecedented increase in global living standards, it could also sharply reduce demand for human labor, fueling unemployment, social unrest, and conflict. Much of the AI debate in recent years has swung between these two extremes. Strikingly, one of the most insightful analyses of the promise and peril of AGI came from OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. In a blog post originally published in 2023 and updated in 2025, Altman displayed a measure of philosophical skepticism uncommon among tech optimists. “We want AGI to empower humanity to maximally flourish in the universe,” he wrote, while recognizing that doing so would require “successfully navigating massive risks.” To be sure, some skepticism is warranted when assessing the potential benefits of technological advances. Since the Enlightenment, humanity has increasingly rejected superstition and dogma in favor of the skeptical spirit of scientifi