OpenAI CEO Sam Altman published a blog post on Monday, musing about the history and future direction of the company. In it, he confidently states that his company knows “how to build AGI as we have traditionally understood it,” and that it is now working toward a “glorious future” of artificial super-intelligence. Altman also revealed Monday that OpenAI’s $200-per-month Pro subscription is somehow losing the company money.
“We love our current products, but we are here for the glorious future,” Altman wrote Monday. “Superintelligent tools could massively accelerate scientific discovery and innovation well beyond what we are capable of doing on our own, and in turn massively increase abundance and prosperity.”
OpenAI has previously defined such artificial general intelligence’s (AGIs) as “AI systems that are generally smarter than humans.” However, that definition has wavered in recent weeks with Altman predicting, “we will hit AGI sooner than most people in the world think and it will matter much less.”
Its pursuit of AGI may be moot if OpenAI doesn’t find a way to keep its lights on. Altman revealed via an X post Monday that OpenAI’s top-of-the-line, unlimited access $200-per-month Pro subscription is turning the opposite of a profit because “people use it more than we expected.”
“I personally chose the price and thought we would make some money,” Altman wrote. He did not provide additional explanation as to his reasoning for choosing that price point or why he was involved in making that decision. OpenAI was expected to lose roughly $5 billion at the close of 2024 despite nearly $4 billion in sales.
insane thing: we are currently losing money on openai pro subscriptions!
people use it much more than we expected.
— Sam Altman (@sama) January 6, 2025
Further, Altman did not expound on the company’s financial status in his blog post but did revisit the fallout from his (albeit temporary) firing in November 2023. “The whole event was, in my opinion, a big failure of governance by well-meaning people, myself included. Looking back, I certainly wish I had done things differently, and I’d like to believe I’m a better, more thoughtful leader today than I was a year ago,” Altman wrote. “Good governance requires a lot of trust and credibility. I appreciate the way so many people worked together to build a stronger system of governance for OpenAI that enables us to pursue our mission of ensuring that AGI benefits all of humanity.”
Since returning to his role overseeing OpenAI, Altman has solidified his power base within the company, wrestled control from its board, and helped steer it toward a far more lucrative, for-profit model, replacing its original nonprofit structure and development protections.
Did you think hitting delete on your AI chatbot conversation actually makes it disappear? Georgia Tech researchers just proved that's not entirely true. They have built a forensic tool called ORISA that can dig deleted conversations from your phone and even rebuild them into a working chatbot session you can keep talking to.
How can ORISA bring deleted AI conversations back?
Touchscreen laptops have been around for years. You can get them in all sizes and shapes. Just not from Apple. For years, the Cupertino giant has treated the idea of a touchscreen MacBook the way I treat a meeting that could have been an email: with open contempt. However, Wednesday looks like the day the company could finally change its mind.
The latest Apple invite puts the “Pro and Tell” showcase in Los Angeles at 10 a.m. PT (1 p.m. ET) on October 28, 2026. Instead of a regular live-streamed keynote, it is an invitation-only, hands-on event for a handful of press and creators (similar to what the company did for the MacBook Neo earlier this year).
Two residents of Chicago have filed a lawsuit in the US over claims that robots run by Coco Robotics and Serve Robotics captured their facial and hand measurements without consent, bringing renewed attention to the food delivery robots. The cases raise a troubling question: If a robot delivers food to your door, can it also be gathering sensitive information about you?
According to a report by The Associated Press, the proposed class-action lawsuits were filed in Cook County on Oct. 9 and allege violations of Illinois’ Biometric Information Privacy Act. The complaints claim that the robots’ cameras and LiDAR sensors captured information on customers’ faces and hands as they approached the machines to pick up their orders. Both have denied the allegations.