Sam Altman Suggests “Universal Basic Compute” to Enable Worldwide Access to GPT-7’s Assets

A new proposal by Sam Altman called “Universal Basic Compute” would provide everyone access to a fraction of GPT-7’s processing power.

In a recent All-in podcast episode, Altman remarked, “I wonder if the future looks something more like Universal Basic Compute than Universal Basic Income, and everybody gets like a slice of GPT-7 compute.”

He suggested that instead of receiving payment in cash, this would be a portion of production that could be sold, used, or even donated to support causes like cancer research, etc. 

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Altman said they started looking at Universal Basic Income (UBI) in 2016. He went on, “Around the same time, we started taking AI seriously,” considering the possible implications AI may have for the economy, jobs, society, and even the social contract.

Reminiscent, Altman stated that he is essentially in favor of uplifting the impoverished and eradicating poverty. “I am not like a super fan of how the government has handled most policies designed to help poor people, and I kind of believe that if you could just give people money, they would make good decisions, and the market would do its thing,” he said. 

He believes that the social safety net that is in place now has issues. “Giving away money won’t be sufficient to solve every problem. People will surely not be happy as a result of it. Still, it could offer some answers. Because circumstances are evolving, Altman said, “It might give people a better horizon with which to help themselves.” Next is Universal Basic Computing.

This latest information is also related to Altman’s contentious claim that “we’re building AGI, I don’t care if we burn 50 billion a year.”   

“I don’t care if we burn $500 million, $5 billion, or $50 billion a year. I don’t care as long as we can find a means to make ends meet and as long as we can keep moving in a direction that will ultimately allow us to contribute considerably more value to society,” he said.

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Next week, OpenAI plans to provide some important news. Not a search engine, not GPT-5, but we’ve been working very hard on some new products we think you’ll love! It seems magical to me,” Altman remarked.

According to sources, it is anticipated to release an AI voice assistant, primarily powered by GPT-4-Lite, GPT-4-Auto, and GPT-4-Lite-Auto, that allows for human-like interaction with improved logical reasoning capabilities and decreased latency.