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Windows Central

Technology

Kevin Okemwa

Sam Altman admits ChatGPT's Advanced Voice Mode tricked him into thinking AI was a real person: "I kind of still say 'please' to ChatGPT, but in Voice Mode, I couldn't use the normal niceties. I was so convinced, like, Argh, it might be a real person"

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In this photo illustration OpenAI icon is displayed on a mobile phone screen in Ankara, Turkiye on August 13, 2024.

What you need to know

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman recently admitted that ChatGPT's Voice Mode tricked him into thinking AI is a real person.
The CEO claims AI systems will become more capable as new features and improvements continue to ship, making them more natural to interact with.
Altman admitted superintelligence could be a few thousand days from OpenAI's doorstep, however, it will require "$7 trillion and many years to build 36 semiconductor plants and additional data centers" to bring the vision to life.

OpenAI's flagship products like ChatGPT and next-gen AI models like OpenAI-o1 continue to scale greater heights with new features and improvements, to the extent that the latter may potentially render coding dead as a career path for the next generation. High-profile tech leaders like NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang and Amazon Web Services CEO Matt Garman share the same sentiments.

Speaking of ChatGPT, OpenAI recently shipped its long-awaited Advanced Voice Mode feature to ChatGPT Plus and Teams users. For context, the feature ships with five new voices, custom instructions, improved conversational speed, smoothness, and accents in select foreign languages.

It's worth noting that the feature isn't yet available in the EU, the UK, Switzerland, Iceland, Norway, and Liechtenstein. You'll also need a $20 monthly subscription to access the feature. While it remains unclear whether the feature will ship to broad availability, OpenAI may be reluctant to ship it because of the EU AI Act's stringent policies, prohibiting AI systems that can recognize a user's emotions.

The feature was initially supposed to ship to general availability in June. However, the date was delayed to July over safety concerns, including improving its ability to detect and refuse harmful content.

Does ChatGPT's Advanced Voice Mode sound too human-like?

A few weeks into Advanced Voice Mode being available to the public, the reception across social media indicates that the feature is borderline human-like, and even OpenAI CEO Sam Altman seemingly agrees.

In a short clip shared on r/OpenAI's subreddit on Reddit, Altman admits that ChatGPT's Voice Mode was the first time he was tricked into thinking AI was a real person.

Sam Altman says ChatGPT's Voice mode was the first time he was tricked into thinking an AI was a person, and he says "please" and "thank you" to ChatGPT because "you never know" from r/OpenAI

According to the CEO:

"I kind of still say 'please' to ChatGPT, but in Voice Mode, I couldn't use the normal niceties. I was so convinced, like, Argh, it might be a real person. And obviously, I was just hacking some circuit in my brain, that I really felt it with Voice Mode and I sort of still do."

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman claims that AI systems and models will likely improve over time. "I think this is more of an example of a more general thing that we're gonna start facing, which is as these AI systems become more and more capable and as we try to make them as natural as possible to interact with," Altman added.

In a recent blog post by Sam Altman, Superintelligence might only be "a few thousand days away." The CEO outlined an audacious plan to edge OpenAI closer to this vision of "$7 trillion and many years to build 36 semiconductor plants and additional data centers."

Coincidentally, OpenAI just closed its funding round, where it raised $6.6 from investors, including Microsoft and NVIDIA, pushing its market capitalization to $157 billion. Interestingly, the AI firm reportedly pleaded with investors for exclusive funding, leaving competitors like Former OpenAI Chief Scientist Illya Sustever's SuperIntelligence Inc. and Elon Musk's xAI to fend for themselves. However, investors are still confident that OpenAI is on the right trajectory to prosperity, potentially becoming the world's dominant AI company worth trillions of dollars.