New Delhi, July 28 -- SAN FRANCISCO - Sam Altman spent the better part of a decade telling anyone who would listen that artificial intelligence was going to transform human civilization in ways that would be hard to overstate. On Saturday, he went further. "We're now, like, in the singularity," the OpenAI chief executive said during an appearance on the Relentless podcast, using a term borrowed from science fiction to describe the moment when AI surpasses human intelligence and begins to evolve beyond human control. He called it "incredibly positive" and said he had been waiting for it his entire life.

Within 72 hours, two members of the United States Congress introduced legislation requiring AI companies to build a kill switch into thei...