In a new essay published Tuesday called “The Gentle Singularity,” OpenAI CEO Sam Altman shared his latest vision for how AI will change the human experience over the next 15 years.

The essay is a classic example of Altman’s futurism: hyping up the promise of AGI — and arguing that his company is quite close to the feat — while simultaneously downplaying its arrival. The OpenAI CEO frequently publishes essays of this nature, cleanly laying out a future in which AGI disrupts our modern conception of work, energy, and the social contract. But often, Altman’s essays contain hints about what OpenAI is working on next.

At one point in the essay, Altman claimed that next year, in 2026, the world will “likely see the arrival of [AI] systems that can figure out novel insights.” While this is somewhat vague, OpenAI executives have recently indicated that the company is focused on getting AI models to come up with new, interesting ideas about the world.

When announcing OpenAI’s o3 and o4-mini AI reasoning models in April, co-founder and President Greg Brockman said these were the first models that scientists had used to generate new, helpful ideas.

Altman’s blog post suggests that in the coming year, OpenAI itself may ramp up its efforts to develop AI that can generate novel insights. OpenA