Tech wunderkind Sam Altman, who has been in the news in past few days because of his ouster and purported return at high-profile startup OpenAI, sees the potential of artificial intelligence (AI) for customer personalization in various sectors.
OpenAI is the company behind ChatGPT, the chatbot that popularized and made AI the breakthrough technology last year.
Altman — in a pre-recorded video conversation with Twilio co-founder and CEO Jeff Lawson during the sidelights of the recent SIGNAL Twilio technology conference held in Singapore — said “one of the promises of AI is that everybody can get a personalized experience.”
Altman, who recently joined Microsoft but is also reportedly returning to his former post at OpenAI, said: “You know, it’s sort of too expensive in a world without AI to have a dedicated team of people serving each customer or creating a personalized experience.”
However, Altman said with AI and companies driving down the cost of intelligence, “we can make that happen. So, it’s something that we know customers really want.”
OpenAI has recently inked a partnership with Twilio, which provides communications platforms to enhance customer engagements, among others, to work together in the field of customer personalization through AI.
Speaking of how AI is going to enhance customer engagement and personalization, Altman emphasized the role of developers.
“It’s the developers doing the amazing stuff that ignites the energy for us. And it’s just been amazing to see, I think most of all, what I would say is, it’s the breadth and depth of what people are building,” he said.
He said some areas that AI-enabled services will include education and healthcare.
“Some areas I’ve been particularly excited about are what people are doing in education. They’re building these like AI tutors to help people learn different things. I find them super compelling. In healthcare it’s still early, but we’re seeing very really promising results,” he said.
“And then this idea of what I call like, AI-enhanced productivity. So you know, some people call it copilot for everything. But the idea is that you can make developers way more productive. You can also make people in many other lines of work more productive with similar approaches,” he said.
Altman also said AI will “continue to improve”. He said: “As long as you’re thinking that AI as an enabler, you can bet on the secret that it’s just going to keep getting smarter,” he added.
Altman also gave his take on what is in store for the future for AI.
“My whole view of the future is that we can drive the cost of intelligence and cost of energy down to zero or close to zero. We’re not quite there yet, but we have to create massive abundance in those two areas. Those are the things that limit us from everything else we want to do,” he said.
“And so, like right now, intelligence is just too expensive to do that for every customer, because it’s actual human,” Altman concluded.
