'A kid born in 2025 is unlikely to ever be as smart as artificial intelligence': Sam Altman thinks it's OK for AI to be smarter than us all - and I am sure we will be totally, totally fine

GITEX 2025
(Image credit: Future)

  • At GITEX 2025, OpenAI's Sam Altman spoke with G42's Peng Xiao about AI’s future
  • Altman said his son will never be smarter than AI, but it won't affect his happiness
  • Altman and Peng predict human-AI coexistence built on adaptation, ambition

At GITEX Global 2025 in Dubai, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman joined remotely from San Francisco for a conversation with Peng Xiao, the Group CEO of G42.

The discussion, attended by TechRadar Pro, explored the rise of artificial intelligence as both a tool and a social force, and what it means for a world that may soon live alongside superintelligence.

Possibly the session’s most striking moment came when the moderator, Amandeep Bhangu, said, “You’ve also said that a kid born in 2025 is unlikely to ever be as smart as artificial intelligence.” Altman, smiling at the reference, said, “I have a kid who was born in 2025, and I don’t think he’ll be smarter than AI. But I don’t think that will get in the way of his happiness or fulfillment at all.”

An AI designed home

Altman also described the idea as “sort of strange, and also to him it's the only world he'll ever know, and I think we've lost sight of what this says about the arrival of super intelligence and certain human condition."

Peng Xiao presented the UAE’s progress toward becoming what he called an AI-native society and said the G42 chairman’s office now operates with a 10-to-1 ratio of AI agents to humans.

“We absolutely put humans at the center of this AI revolution,” he said. “Our employees are amplified through AI agents. This forms a new kind of team.”

“If your home is designed by ChatGPT, if you have more agents working for you than humans, AI has already arrived and is an integral part of our everyday life,” Xiao added, having previously revealed that the G42 chairman’s home was created entirely through ChatGPT using more than 500 prompts and constructed in less than a year.

Altman also spoke about OpenAI’s progress, revealing that, “for the first time, GPT-5 is making very small but real scientific breakthroughs.”

He described scientific progress as the heartbeat of sustainable human advancement and predicted that by 2026, AI systems would uncover new insights and, by 2027, robots would perform practical, real-world tasks.

Both leaders also discussed Project Stargate, a G42–OpenAI collaboration to build a one-gigawatt data center in the UAE, expanding to five gigawatts.

Energy was also a focus - paraphrasing a previous conversation he'd had with Altman not long ago, Peng said, “The cost of intelligence eventually will equal the cost of energy. Energy is the key. Every nation needs to have a smart energy policy, energy plan."

Altman agreed, adding, "But the reason we do all of this is because we believe it can transform the world for people. It can unlock all sorts of incredible new things. People deserve this, and I’m delighted to work with my friend Peng to try to get there."

Altman closed by saying, “I think this is both the most exciting scientific endeavor I have ever seen in history, and the thing that will most improve people's lives. To get to work on that is exhausting and a great honor."

You can watch the full, fascinating conversation in the video below.


GITEX GLOBAL 2025! - YouTube GITEX GLOBAL 2025! - YouTube
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Wayne Williams
Editor

Wayne Williams is a freelancer writing news for TechRadar Pro. He has been writing about computers, technology, and the web for 30 years. In that time he wrote for most of the UK’s PC magazines, and launched, edited and published a number of them too.

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