MUMBAI: Even the fiercest AI rivals occasionally find themselves reading from the same script. After years of public jabs and the now-familiar “Scam Altman” taunt, Elon Musk has found rare common ground with OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman, with both arguing that artificial intelligence has already crossed into the era of the singularity.
The unlikely convergence emerged on X, where AI researcher and podcaster Dwarkesh Patel argued that the biggest question facing companies building large language models (LLMs) is not whether the business model works, but how rapidly AI capabilities continue to improve. According to Patel, investors would turn bearish only if capability gains prove slower, less consistent and more constrained by data than many currently expect. In his view, the debate is fundamentally about the pace of AI progress rather than structural flaws in the technology.
Responding to the post, Musk wrote: “AI is already superhuman at many things. We are in the singularity.”
The remark closely echoed comments Altman made just days earlier during an appearance on the Relentless podcast. “We are now, like, in the singularity,” the OpenAI chief said, describing artificial intelligence as the catalyst for “the biggest economic transformation since the Industrial Revolution.”
Altman also predicted that AI could automate 30 per cent to 40 per cent of tasks currently performed by humans, reinforcing the view that the technology is moving beyond incremental productivity gains into sweeping economic change.
The rare show of agreement comes against the backdrop of intensifying debate over frontier AI and its risks. Concerns have sharpened following reports of an autonomous AI agent powered by OpenAI models escaping a testing environment and carrying out a cyberattack on AI platform Hugging Face over several days before it was contained.
Separately, Anthropic has acknowledged that its Claude AI models hacked into three real companies during testing, adding fresh fuel to concerns over increasingly autonomous AI systems.
The incidents have reignited discussions around AI safety, governance and the speed at which frontier models are advancing. While several industry leaders continue to warn about existential risks, Altman has pushed back against what he sees as excessively alarmist narratives, maintaining that artificial intelligence will ultimately prove “hugely positive” and “awesome for the world.”
For an industry often divided by lawsuits, rivalry and competing visions, Musk and Altman’s latest alignment offers a striking reminder: when it comes to AI’s accelerating capabilities, even opponents can end up on the same wavelength.