OpenAI Chief Says AI Mostly Smarter Than Top Scientists
Sam Altman made the claim at an Abu Dhabi energy conference, alongside new OpenAI partnerships with G42 and Abu Dhabi National Oil Company.
Updated on Nov. 2, 2026 in Artificial Intelligence
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OpenAI Chief Executive Sam Altman said advanced AI models are now mostly smarter than top scientists, speaking at the opening of the Abu Dhabi International Petroleum Exhibition and Conference in the United Arab Emirates. OpenAI also announced partnerships with G42 and Abu Dhabi National Oil Company.
Why it matters
The partnerships mark the first global deployment of OpenAI's frontier models by an energy company, signaling AI's expansion into heavy industry. Altman's remarks highlight both rapid capability gains and the growing demand for computing infrastructure.
Global per capita token consumption has climbed from near zero six years ago to roughly 100,000 tokens a month, while top institutional users consume about 500 billion tokens monthly. The source does not explain how these figures were measured, and the claim about AI outperforming top scientists has no independent benchmark cited.
The players
Sam Altman
Sam Altman is the chief executive of OpenAI, the artificial intelligence company behind ChatGPT, and is one of the most prominent figures in the global AI industry.
OpenAI
OpenAI is an American artificial intelligence research and deployment company known for developing the ChatGPT chatbot and frontier AI models.
G42
G42 is an Abu Dhabi-based artificial intelligence and cloud computing company with significant ties to the United Arab Emirates' technology strategy.
Abu Dhabi National Oil Company
Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, commonly known as ADNOC, is the state-owned oil and gas enterprise of the United Arab Emirates.
The details
Altman spoke at the opening ceremony of the Abu Dhabi International Petroleum Exhibition and Conference, where he said physical power supply is the single biggest bottleneck for the sector. Around 80% of young people in the UAE use ChatGPT on a weekly basis.
Timeline
Start of 2026: AI was mostly not as smart as top scientists, according to Altman.
Monday, November 2, 2026: Altman spoke at the Abu Dhabi petroleum conference.
The Tech Race
The partnerships extend ChatGPT's mass consumer adoption, where roughly 80% of young people in the UAE use it weekly, into industrial deployment by a national oil company. The move positions OpenAI against rival AI developers competing for large sovereign and energy-sector contracts.
For UAE residents and other heavy AI users, the expansion of OpenAI's models into energy operations could affect the tools and services available through workplace software. Because Altman identified power supply as the main constraint, the pace of rollout may depend on electricity availability rather than only on software readiness.
The takeaway
Altman's remarks suggest that the limiting factor for AI growth may be physical infrastructure such as power rather than model capability alone. Readers following AI deployment should watch energy supply and computing capacity as closely as new model releases.
Further reading
Explore more coverage in our Artificial Intelligence section.
Source note: This article includes information reported by Anadolu Ajansı.
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