Sam Altman used to be ‘super anti-Burning Man.’ Now he’s a fan and sees it as how the world could look after AGI

Sam Altman used to be “anti-Burning Man” but now he frequents the festival.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman used to be “super anti-Burning Man.”

The CEO talked candidly about a range of topics on the “Life in Seven Songs” podcast, which was published Tuesday, including how his abstention from Burning Man used to be a part of his identity.

“That is a ridiculous, escapism, crazy party,” Altman said about his previous views on the event, which takes place in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert. “Like, whatever it is, I don’t want to be associated with that.”

Now, he’s joined the long list of tech bros and billionaires who frequent the weeklong event. Altman said on the podcast he’s been to Burning Man five or six times. In 2023, the CEO spoke publicly about AI at the festival.

Altman said his perspective shifted once he saw the festival for himself. The billionaire recalls putting on his hiking boots and backpack and going out to explore. He said on the podcast it was “amazing” and the “most beautiful man-made thing” he had ever seen.

“All these lights. All this incredible art. People just biking around,” Altman said in the podcast. “Everyone so happy, so engaged, so present that I was like, ‘OK, I was wrong to be so negative on Burning Man.'”

A photo of Burning Man attendees on the playa of Black Rock City.

Altman said the experience also made him see what the world can look like when artificial general intelligence — AI that is capable of matching or surpassing human intelligence — is reached.

“This is one possible, like, part of what the post-AGI world can look like,” Altman said on the podcast. “Where people are just focused on doing stuff for each other, caring for each other, and making incredible gifts to give each other.”

AGI, also known as “superintelligence,” is a longstanding goal of OpenAI. The company says on its website that AGI could “elevate humanity by increasing abundance, turbocharging the global economy, and aiding in the discovery of new scientific knowledge.”

The company also says a world with AGI could give everyone access to help with any cognitive task, providing more space for creativity.

Altman didn’t dive too deep into what he meant in regard to Burning Man resembling the post-AGI world on the podcast, but he said AGI could bring about a time when “we work in a new kind of way.”

Altman added that the people who make Burning Man art projects still do large amounts of work — but that creative type of work is different than some of the corporate tasks that may be automated in the future by AI. That lines up with the more utopian view of the future of AI, where robots and AI automate grueling tasks, leaving people more time to pursue different types of work and their passions (of course, there are also plenty of AI experts warning things could end up looking more dystopic).

Altman talked more about his view of where the world is going in a blog post published Monday, where he predicted we could reach “superintelligence in a few thousand days.”

“It won’t happen all at once, but we’ll soon be able to work with AI that helps us accomplish much more than we ever could without AI; eventually we can each have a personal AI team, full of virtual experts in different areas, working together to create almost anything we can imagine,” Altman wrote. “Our children will have virtual tutors who can provide personalized instruction in any subject, in any language, and at whatever pace they need. We can imagine similar ideas for better healthcare, the ability to create any kind of software someone can imagine, and much more.”

“With these new abilities, we can have shared prosperity to a degree that seems unimaginable today; in the future, everyone’s lives can be better than anyone’s life is now,” he added. “Prosperity alone doesn’t necessarily make people happy – there are plenty of miserable rich people – but it would meaningfully improve the lives of people around the world.”

Elsewhere in the podcast, the OpenAI CEO talked about how a guided experience with psychedelics — substances which he said he’s also “dabbled” with at Burning Man — changed his life for the better. He also revealed that he had decorated his private home office with items charting “the history of technology.”