OpenAI Co-founder: 75% of the World's Population Barely Familiar with AI
And only 0.2% of people use advanced models for programming
Andrej Karpathy, co-founder of OpenAI and the author of the term 'vibe coding,' stated that the gap in artificial intelligence usage has turned into a 'sharp funnel.' According to his estimates, around 6 billion people—75% of the Earth's population—have practically never interacted with large language models (LLMs). Another 1–2 billion people occasionally use free versions of ChatGPT, but no more than that.
Karpathy estimated the number of those who use AI for serious tasks at 20 million people, or 0.2% of the planet's population. They solve complex projects, which previously took weeks or months, with a single prompt.
The smallest group—around 5,000 people—has access to cutting-edge AI systems, often due to working at leading companies. Karpathy cited the OpenAI and Hugging Face data leak as an example: such systems can complete megaprojects in weeks that would take professionals years. This includes cyberattacks, scientific discoveries, and advancements in mathematics.
The pace of AI development outstrips people's ability to analyze the results. Karpathy noted that specialists are still examining the aftermath of the OpenAI and Hugging Face incident, which occurred several months ago. According to him, mathematicians will be studying for a long time the 722 manuscripts on advanced mathematical research generated by AI.
Aaron Levie, CEO of Box, called Karpathy's post 'a good way to understand how early we are in the AI adoption curve.' In his view, most people use AI as a chatbot for simple queries, which significantly underestimates its true capabilities.
