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Sam Altman Says He Was Wrong About AI Timelines Because 'the Economy Just Has So Much Inertia'
In an interview published 2026-08-24 on David Senra's podcast, Altman said he expected that after GPT-4 in 2023 'very quickly after that there was going to be much more disruption, software businesses up for grabs right away, than it turned out to be.' He attributed the miss to economic inertia rather than model capability: 'People keep doing the same things, buying from the same company, wanting to use their tools the same way,' concluding 'we've all been too ambitious on timelines.' The r/singularity thread drew 917 upvotes and 487 comments, with the top reply pointing at Solow's 1987 productivity paradox as the precedent.
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