OpenAI Just Said Human Typing Is Holding Back AGI – And It’s Wild
An OpenAI executive just dropped a bombshell that has everyone talking: the biggest thing slowing down artificial general intelligence (AGI) isn’t computers, chips, or even money… it’s how fast you can type.
Alexander Embiricos, who leads product development for OpenAI’s coding agent Codex, said on Lenny’s Podcast: “The current underappreciated limiting factor to AGI is human typing speed or human multi-tasking speed on writing prompts.”
His point? Right now, humans have to constantly write prompts and check every single thing the AI does. We’re simply too slow. Embiricos believes the real breakthrough will come when AI agents can review and fix their own work – no more humans typing like crazy to keep up.
He even predicted this shift will unlock “hockey-stick growth” – that moment when progress suddenly explodes upward. Once agents become “default useful,” AGI could arrive much faster than anyone expected.
The internet is already reacting: some people are laughing (“My 40 wpm is literally stopping superintelligence?!”), others are worried (“What happens to jobs when AI doesn’t need us to type anymore?”).
One thing is clear: OpenAI is moving so fast that even human fingers are now the bottleneck. The future of work just got a lot less about keyboards… and a lot more about what we do when the machines take over the typing.
What do you think – excited or terrified? Drop your thoughts below!
