Ilya Sutskever Says AI’s Future Impact Will Be Unprecedented

Posted on August 9, 2025 by JimS

By Jim Shimabukuro
Editor

In this 10-minute video posted on YouTube (on 8 June 2025 by the University of Toronto), Ilya Sutskever, co-founder and former chief scientist at OpenAI, speaks at the University of Toronto’s Spring Convocation (6 June 2025). His message: AI is rapidly creating a future that’s “really unprecedented and really extreme,” and the best way to prepare for it is to experience it firsthand, with our own senses, to get a feel for its potential to enhance our ability to learn and perform and to begin to grasp what that means for our future.

Sutskever’s remarks about AI begin at the 3:35 mark of the video below.

Here’s an extract of his key points:

“Right now we all live in the most unusual time ever, and this is something that people might say often, but I think it’s actually true this time. And the reason … is because of AI…. The current level of challenge is, how will it affect work and our careers? But the real challenge with AI is that it’s really unprecedented and really extreme, and it’s going to be very different in the future compared to the way it is today.”

“There are so many things it cannot do as well…. But slowly but surely, or maybe not so slowly, AI will keep getting better. And the day will come when AI will do all the things that we can do. Not just some of them, but all of them…. How can I be so sure?… The reason is that … the brain is a biological computer. So why can’t the digital computer, a digital brain, do the same things. This is the one sentence summary of why AI will be able to do all those things.”

“I’m trying to pull you into … this headspace of this really extreme and radical future that AI creates…. So what does one do in such a world?… I think that by simply using AI and looking at what the best AI of today can do, you get an intuition…. The challenge that AI poses in some sense is the greatest challenge of humanity ever, and overcoming it will also bring the greatest reward…. Whether you like it or not, your life will be affected by AI to a great extent, and so looking at it, paying attention and then generating the energy to solve the problems that will come up, that’s going to be the main thing.”

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