LONDON – OpenAI CEO Sam Altman announced that next major breakthrough in AI is intelligence surpassing humans. And it will come when AI systems gain “unlimited, perfect memory.”
While recent advancements by OpenAI and other competitors working on large language models (LLMs) have focused primarily on improving AI reasoning abilities, Altman revealed in an interview with Big Technology Podcast that what excites him the most is AI being able to remember every detail of a human’s life. He added that OpenAI is actively working toward this milestone, targeting 2026 for achieving it.
Altman said “no matter how good your personal assistant is, it cannot remember every word you’ve said. “It cannot read every document you have written. It cannot observe all your daily activities and remember every tiny detail. It cannot be that involved in your life. And no human possesses unlimited, perfect memory. But AI certainly will.”
Altman stressed that current AI memory is raw, but this capability represents next frontier of intelligence. His tatements come just weeks after Google launched its latest Gemini 3 model, dubbed a “new era of intelligence”, which scored record-breaking results in multiple industry benchmark tests.
This release followed alleged “code red” alert within OpenAI, signaling the competitive stakes. Despite Gemini 3’s impressive launch, Altman downplayed its threat, saying, “It’s not unusual for us to respond quickly to new competition. I think being cautious and acting swiftly when a competitive threat emerges is a good thing. This has happened before, earlier this year with DeepMind.
Gemini 3 has not caused the impact we feared, or at least not yet, but it did reveal some weaknesses in our products and strategy, which we are addressing rapidly.”
Altman laid out OpenAI’s strategy for winning the AI race: “Build the best models, develop the best products around them, and ensure the infrastructure is in place to deliver them at scale.”
ChatGPT amassed around 800 million users, holding 71% of the AI app market, down from 87% last year. Meanwhile, Google has increased its market share from about 5% to over 15%.
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