‘This revolution is happening in years, not decades’: Verizon CEO Dan Schulman sees AGI within 18 months - and a century of progress in a decade

Verizon CEO Dan Schulman offered a strikingly aggressive forecast for artificial intelligence’s development at the Ford Pro Accelerate event in Detroit, saying that an earthquake is headed our way.

“The models that we see today are the worst models we’ll ever use in our lives,” Schulman said in conversation with Fortune ’s Diane Brady. “Every two months, there’s a step function change in the power of the models. I think we get to some form of AGI in the next six to 18 months. I think it’s right on us.”

Two years after that, he added, we will arrive at “the era of quantum,” which he described as “everything today times 1,000.” By 2030 or 2035, we will see “a pretty good form of humanoid robotics.” Summing it up, he added, “we’ve got a decade of intense change ahead of us.”

AGI, or artificial general intelligence, is a term generally used for systems that can reason and perform broadly across domains rather than excel at discrete tasks. Schulman argued that AI’s economic and social effects will arrive at a pace that outstrips the usual mechanisms for absorbing technological change, such as training systems, labor markets, corporate restructuring, and public policy. “It is about machines that will in many ways be able to do things better than a lot of human tasks are done today,” he said.

“I think you’ll see the collapse of the 21st century in the next five to 10 years,” Schulman said. When Brady asked what he meant by “collapse,” he explained, “Progress we would have made over 100 years will happen over the next five to 10 years.

“I don’t think we can really imagine how powerful the technology and how fundamental it will be.”

Schulman said the change would reach his company itself. Verizon, he said, has more than 250,000 employees and contractors and will need to move from a workforce organized around “very defined roles and functions” to a “much more fluid organization.”

“The technology is coming,” he said. “There will be safeguards around it. There need to be additional safeguards, but it will continue on.” He urged corporate leaders and government to prepare for difficult scenarios rather than assume the labor market will naturally adjust.

“At Verizon last week we announced a $70 million initiative to do training for American workers, not just Verizon workers, but American workers in the community across the country,” Schulman said.

The initiative includes free AI training and work with local organizations on career development, he said, before adding a prescription for all leaders and policymakers. “Our responsibility is to think about what might go wrong; what might we need to address; what might the disruption look like; and how do we put guardrails, training, programs in place to minimize that risk,” Schulman said.