The head of OpenAI, Sam Altman, spoke at the BlackRock US Infrastructure Summit and spoke with board member Adebayo Ogunlesi about an ambitious vision for the future of artificial intelligence.

According to him, intelligence in the future will be as much a public service as electricity or water - people will buy it from providers on the meter. Altman emphasized that the company has a "fundamental faith in the abundance of intelligence" and sets the task of making it so cheap that "counting by the counter was unnecessary."

The energy metaphor is not chosen by chance: it is the rapid development of AI that has already driven up the cost of electricity in the US, owing to massive data-center consumption. Financing the necessary infrastructure remains a challenge, and OpenAI recently abandoned its expansion of the Stargate project in Texas precisely because of lack of funds. Altman recognizes that avoiding the huge AI bill requires increasing computing power, which in itself requires a huge investment.