Kamal Ghorui
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is once again making headlines with his latest post on X (formerly Twitter). Altman shared a post earlier today where he predicted economic collapse in a post-AGI world hit by mass unemployment. For those unaware, AGI or artificial general intelligence is a theoretical, advanced form of AI that matches or exceeds human cognitive abilities across all domains, including learning, reasoning, and planning. “Post-AGI, no one is going to work and the economy is going to collapse,” Sam Altman wrote. In another statement, Altman announced that he is switching to a “polyphasic sleep” – a practice of sleeping during multiple periods over the course of 24 hours. Why? Because there is too much happening in the AI world to “miss out” by sleeping.Sam Altman wrote: “i am switching to polyphasic sleep because GPT-5.5 in codex is so good that i can’t afford to be sleeping for such long stretches and miss out on working”.It seems like Altman has made two separate, deliberately contradictory statements — one echoing the popular doomer fear that AGI will render human work obsolete, and another admitting that he personally finds the tech so compelling and productive that he’s willing to sacrifice sleep just to use it more. The irony is hard to miss: the man building the tech that’s supposedly going to end work can’t stop working because of it.Notably, in 2025 Altman predicted that AGI could arrive by 2030 – a view often questioned by other leaders in the tech industry. Moltbot creator Peter Steinberger recently distanced himself from the AGI, calling for specialised intelligence instead of generalised intelligence. Speaking on the Y Combinator podcast recently, Steinberger argued that the industry’s focus on AGI ignores the fundamental way humans and technology actually succeed: through specialisation, according to Business Insider. Steinberger is not alone in his skepticism. Anthropic president Daniela Amodei called the AI concept ‘outdated’ while Google DeepMind CEO said AGI cannot be achieved without “world models.”
OpenAI launches GPT 5.5 in codex
Sam Altman’s post comes as the AI company recently launched its GPT 5.5 AI model. In the official announcement, OpenAI said that the new model comes with significant improvements in reasoning, coding and scientific research. The company also stated that GPT-5.5 is faster, more efficient and safer as compared to its predecessor. GPT‑5.5 builds on the capabilities of GPT‑5.4 but introduces key upgrades. The latest model can easily handle complex multi-step tasks with better planning, tool use and self-correction. The model is particularly strong in coding and debugging. OpenAI also stated that it managed to achieve 82.7% accuracy on Terminal‑Bench 2.0, outperforming rivals like Anthropic’s Claude Opus 4.7 and Google’s Gemini 3.1 Pro.Despite its increased intelligence, GPT‑5.5 maintains the same speed as GPT‑5.4 while using fewer tokens per task, making it more cost‑effective for enterprises and developers.
Poll
How do you feel about the practice of polyphasic sleep adopted by Altman?
