Among other things, Sam Altman fears that artificial intelligence will be used for disinformation campaigns and cyber attacks.
At the helm of the company behind ChatGPT, Sam Altman believes that artificial intelligence (AI) is “the best technology mankind has ever devised”. But while OpenAI’s CEO believes it can transform society as we know it, he’s also concerned about the dangers it poses. He said so in an interview with ABC News. “We have to be careful here. I think people should be happy that we’re a little scared,” he said.
Sam Altman’s concerns include the potential use of these AI models “for large-scale disinformation.” Chatbots like ChatGPT may have impressive capabilities, but they can actually provide false and misleading information, a recent study by startup NewsGuard has shown.
Legitimate fears
The OpenAI CEO also worries that they will be used for cyberattacks “now that they are getting better at writing computer code”. A not unfounded concern, as cybercriminals are already using them to create malware or even spread it via AI-generated videos on YouTube.
While OpenAI has safeguards in place to limit the creation of illegal or even dangerous content with its tools, Sam Altman is also concerned that “we won’t be the sole creators of this technology.” “There will be other people who won’t set some of the security boundaries that we have,” he said, noting in particular the risk of authoritarian governments developing their own versions of these models. Chinese giant Baidu, for example, just introduced its own version of ChatGPT called Ernie Bot. Moreover, in 2017, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that the leader of the AI industry “is going to rule the world”. Remarks rated as “terrifying” by the CEO of OpenAI.
Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, on the potential of AI job destruction:
“It will cut a lot of current jobs, that’s true. We can create a lot better ones.” pic.twitter.com/eqDLVberdg
— Rowan Cheung (@rowancheung) March 20, 2023
Finally, regarding fears that AI will replace jobs, Sam Altman said it likely will in the near future and worried about how quickly that could happen. If “many current jobs are lost as a result,” he says, “much better ones could be created.”