In a new essay, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman predicts an imminent “intelligence age” bringing great prosperity. He notes that while millennia of progress led to AI-capable computer chips, superintelligence may emerge in mere “few thousands of days,” marking a rapid leap forward.

But it’s this bit of explanatory context, not the forecast, that for me really jumps out: “Technology brought us from the Stone Age to the Agricultural Age and then to the Industrial Age. From here, the path to the Intelligence Age is paved with compute, energy, and human will.”

Let’s focus on those first two items, compute and energy. Altman nails it. They play a key role in humanity’s societal evolution, at least according to the paper “The computational power of a human society: a new model of social evolution” by David H. Wolpert (Santa Fe Institute), and Kyle Harper (University of Oklahoma, Santa Fe Institute). This thermodynamic relationship explains human progress from hunter-gatherer bands to global civilization, despite unchanged individual cognitive capacities.

The formula, in short: better energy harvesting + improved information processing = greater complexity (larger populations, diverse occupations, advanced technologies, more intricate social structures). For example: The Industrial Revolution wasn’t just about coal. It combined energy and information, with blueprints for technologies like steam engines that revolutionized 19th-century society. The Second Industrial Revolution saw basic science driving innovation, from light bulbs to telecommunications. Likewise, fundamental discoveries in chemistry and electromagnetism led to breakthroughs that advanced our mastery of energy and information, and increased societal complexity and capability. 

Then there’s the third element of progress that Altman mentions: “human will.” I suppose by that he means the collective human drive to innovate, solve problems, and shape the future despite the challenges and complexities involved. In my view, part of that “will” is the will to remove obstacles to progress, such as regulations that make it hard to innovate and build in the physical world. Or to put it another way, the will to create an innovation ecosystem where people are free to innovate and reap the reward of their innovation.

Energy. Compute. Freedom. By dismantling barriers (deregulation) and nurturing capabilities (greater science and technological investment in the public and private sectors), we can accelerate economic progress and all its upsides through a new “information age.”

As Altman concludes:

I believe the future is going to be so bright that no one can do it justice by trying to write about it now; a defining characteristic of the Intelligence Age will be massive prosperity. Although it will happen incrementally, astounding triumphs – fixing the climate, establishing a space colony, and the discovery of all of physics – will eventually become commonplace. With nearly-limitless intelligence and abundant energy – the ability to generate great ideas, and the ability to make them happen – we can do quite a lot.

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