📌 TOPINDIATOURS Eksklusif ai: Sam Altman Says AI Will Cause Massive Deflation, Mak

OpenAI is betting in the biggest way possible on a future ruled by AI. It’s committing to spending well over $1 trillion to build out enormous data centers — despite business fundamentals lagging far behind, stoking fears over troubling days ahead.

During a town hall livestreamed on Monday, CEO Sam Altman admitted that the company was looking to pump the brakes, revealing that it’s looking to “dramatically slow down” hiring as the company continues to burn through billions of dollars each quarter.

At the same time, Altman remained characteristically bullish about what his company’s tech will soon offer to the world. When asked if AI can be used to “solve economic gaps that have existed for decades,” the executive argued that it’s “going to be massively deflationary.”

“Given, certainly, progress with work you can do in front of a computer, but also what looks like it will soon happen with robotics and a bunch of other things, we’re going to have massively deflationary pressure,” he predicted.

As a result of this deflationary pressure, Altman promised that things would get “radically cheaper” and the “empowerment of individual people” will go up as money becomes more valuable — which, it’s worth noting, would be an inversion of virtually every economic system in history, which have overwhelmingly been inflationary.

Altman reasoned that these economic changes would be the result of AI allowing individuals to be vastly more productive. He argued that by the end of this year, an individual spending $1,000 on inference — essentially the cost of running an AI — could complete a piece of software in a short period of time, a task that would have previously taken a whole team a much longer period.

It’s not the first time Altman has argued that AI could make money more valuable. In March, he claimed that AI will have a deflationary impact on the global economy during a closed-door Morgan Stanley conference.

The broader argument that AI could lead to an age of “abundance” in which the cost of living starts to decrease — and that we could even choose not to work if we didn’t want to — has long been deployed by tech leaders, including Altman and xAI CEO Elon Musk, to drive the AI hype cycle.

But given the current state of the economy, such a point remains little more than a daydream. The reality is that AI is still incredibly far from boosting efficiency enough to offset inflation. Just earlier today, the US Federal Reserve held interest rates steady, citing ongoing concerns over “elevated” inflation.

In fact, AI has more frequently been linked to mass layoffs that make it harder to survive. Long-term unemployment hit a four-year high earlier this year as jobseekers struggled to find new work. The cost of living has also continued to climb, particularly in larger US cities.

Whether AI will come to the rescue and dramatically bring down prices remains to be seen, as uncomfortable questions surrounding the tech’s viability linger.

Researchers have shown that AI is largely failing to boost productivity, at least in its current form. Surveys have found that the number of people using AI at work is falling, a troubling trend that flies in the face of promises made by tech leaders. Many of these workers argue that AI is essentially useless to them, despite their employers’ insistence that it’s revolutionary, productivity-boosting tech.

To AI’s many critics, it’s a dead end. Some have argued that OpenAI itself could be a house of cards that’s one run on the banks away from collapsing in on itself.

In short, there are plenty of reasons to remain skeptical of Altman’s claims that AI will put more buying power into each of our pockets as productivity goes stratospheric. He’s also gone as far as to argue that AI could cure cancer, solve climate change, and alleviate our financial struggles with “universal extreme health.”

Musk has similarly prophesied that “there will be no poverty in the future, and so no need to save money.” Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has also argued that we could one day work far less as a result of AI.

It’s an enormous bet — and Altman and his counterparts have plenty still to prove as reality continues to lag behind their lofty promises.

Even Altman himself isn’t entirely convinced that sudden abundance will actually be a good thing for the average person.

“Massively more abundance and access and massively decreased cost to be able to create new things, new companies, discover new science, whatever…” he said during this week’s town hall. “I think that should be an equalizing force in society and a way that people who have not gotten treated that fairly get a really good shot.”

“As long as we don’t screw up the policy around it in a big way,” he warned, “which could happen.”

More on Altman: Sam Altman Says OpenAI Is Slashing Its Hiring Pace as Financial Crunch Tightens

The post Sam Altman Says AI Will Cause Massive Deflation, Making Money Worth Vastly More appeared first on Futurism.

🔗 Sumber: futurism.com

📌 TOPINDIATOURS Eksklusif ai: Video: 6,000-pound robot helps Cornell team 3D-print

Since its invention in the 1980s, 3D printing has steadily moved from research labs into factories, homes, and even space missions.

In fall 2024, a new milestone emerged when researchers at Cornell University announced progress on a method to 3D-print concrete underwater, a development that could reshape how ocean infrastructure is built and repaired.

The work began after the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency issued a challenge in late 2024, asking teams to design concrete that could be printed several feet underwater within just one year.

The effort targets urgent needs such as repairing undersea cables, ports, and other structures that support global communication and trade. Cornell’s team believes their approach could reduce environmental disruption while cutting construction time and cost.

Printing concrete beneath the ocean surface

The Cornell effort is led by Sriramya Nair, an assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering. Her group has focused on printing concrete directly underwater rather than building parts on land and lowering them into place.

“We want to be constructing without being disruptive,” said Nair.

“If you have a remotely operated underwater vehicle that shows up on site with minimal disturbance to the ocean, then there is a way to build smarter and not continue the same practices that we do on the land.”

When DARPA released its call for proposals, Nair’s team decided to test whether their existing large-scale concrete printing system could be adapted. The group already worked with an industrial robot weighing about 6,000 pounds. By modifying their concrete mixture to handle constant water exposure, they found the material could still be printed in stable layers underwater.

“It turned out, with our mixture we could actually 3D-print underwater by making adjustments to account for continuous water exposure,” she added.

Solving washout and material stability

One of the biggest problems in underwater concrete printing is washout. This happens when cement particles separate in water and fail to bind, weakening the structure. Chemical additives can help, but they introduce new trade-offs.

“When you add those chemicals, it makes your mixture really viscous, and you can’t pump. So you’re balancing that pumpability with these anti-washout agents,” Nair explained. “When it extrudes, even if you don’t have washout, you still want it to be able to hold the shape and bond well with the other layers. There are multiple parameters at play.”

DARPA added another constraint. The concrete had to be made mostly from seafloor sediment, with only a small amount of cement. This requirement aims to reduce the need to transport cement by ship, which is costly and logistically complex.

Using seafloor sediment as building material

In September 2025, the Cornell team demonstrated progress toward DARPA’s sediment target for visiting agency officials. According to Nair, the test showed that printing with ocean-floor material is becoming a reality.

“Nobody is doing this right now,” she pointed out. “Nobody takes seafloor sediment and prints with it. This is opening up a lot of opportunities for reimagining what concrete could look like.”

The project brings together experts in materials science, robotics, architecture, and civil engineering. Researchers from Cornell are joined by collaborators from the University of Michigan, Clarkson University, and the University of Arizona. The team is split into material design and fabrication groups to handle the system’s complexity.

Sensors and autonomy for real-world printing

The next phase of the DARPA challenge will take place in March, when teams will compete to 3D-print an underwater arch. In preparation, Cornell researchers have been printing test arches in large water tanks several times a week. These tests allow close inspection on land, but real ocean conditions demand automation.

“Let’s say you want to print underwater in the real world—we can’t send somebody down with a scuba suit, right? We have to be able to detect those things and adjust our tool path in real time,” Nair stated.

“The overall goal is to achieve good print quality, because if you don’t place your material where it needs to be, you’re not going to get the strength you need.”

Visibility is another challenge. Fine sediment can quickly make water cloudy.

“The problem is sediment is super fine, and as soon as you stir it up, you can have zero visibility,” added Nils Napp, who specializes in building and programming mechatronic devices.

“We didn’t know how much turbidity—or murkiness—there would be in the water.”

To address this, the team developed a sensor-packed control box that works with the robot arm, helping guide printing without human divers. As the March demonstration approaches, the group is racing to integrate advanced materials with robotic control, hoping to prove that underwater 3D printing is ready for the real world.

🔗 Sumber: interestingengineering.com