The boss of ChatGPT-maker OpenAI says people should have more faith in his firm and others like it to do the right thing when it comes to AI development, amid rising public concerns about the risks.
“The world should trust that we are going to do the right thing because it’s the right thing and we feel the magnitude of this,” Sam Altman said on Tuesday during a conference in San Francisco.
However, Altman noted that people were justified in their fears around AI, as the capability of the tools has progressed rapidly.
Speaking in Washington meanwhile, left-wing Senator Bernie Sanders and former Trump adviser Steve Bannon have both called for greater governance of AI.
Altman’s comments came during an appearance at an annual conference hosted by software firm Salesforce.
“It doesn’t take as much imagination as it used to for [us] to imagine how this could go wrong,” he said. “I think the world is right to be afraid of this.”
It was the first time he had spoken publicly since a post went viral last week by a researcher who quit the AI firm Anthropic. The researcher claimed AI could “kill all humans” by the end of the decade if left unchecked.
A handful of other AI executives and experts responded by saying they agreed with the assessment, though they didn’t explain how they came to their conclusions or how exactly AI could accomplish such a thing.
After Altman’s comments, Mark Zuckerberg wrote on X every AI firm has the ability and the incentive “to take its own actions” towards safety.
“Any lab that doesn’t focus on alignment will fall behind,” the Meta chief executive wrote.
“Labs face significant liability if their models cause harm, so they have a strong incentive to prevent this as well.”
Alignment is a field which aims to build human ethical ideas and principles into AI. In other words, it aims to keep it on track with what humans value.
Nvidia boss Jensen Huang said at the same Tuesday conference AI firms should decide if new versions of the technology should be released – and not be managed by outside forces.
“We don’t need new laws or regulations,” he said, adding there should not be a “false choice” between the speed of innovation and the safety of AI products.
Nvidia is the biggest company in the world by valuation, with its profits having boomed as a result of rampant demand for its hardware.
Huang also argued safety is an “engineering problem” and companies should “take a pause” if they lose confidence in a product.
