Sam Altman, in a timely interview with The New York Times just two days before the board of OpenAI abruptly fired him from his position as chief executive officer, called artificial intelligence “the most important and beneficial technology humanity has yet invented.”
“I think we’re heading toward the best world ever,” said Altman, whose childhood hero was Steve Jobs.
Immediately hired by Microsoft to lead its AI research, Altman also dispelled a rumor that has since surfaced as to why the board unceremoniously ousted him: that he is an AI “accelerationist” who wants the technology — which many influential people including Elon Musk warn could obliterate mankind — to be fast-tracked.
No to ‘All Gas’
“No, I certainly don’t think all gas, no brakes toward the future,” Altman said. “But I do think we should go to the future, and … I think it’s going to be awesome.”
But, the founder of OpenAI admits, if AI evolves to the point that it can reason like a human being and is used for illegal or immoral purposes, it could become quite dangerous.
“If we’re not careful about it, it can be quite disastrous. And so, we have to navigate it carefully. So all gas? No brakes? Certainly not.”
Red lines and regulation will definitely be needed for AI, but Altman cannot predict what those red lines will be or how they will change, saying, “Where those red lines will be so depends on how the technology evolves. On the frontier systems, there does need to be proactive regulation — but heading into overreach and regulatory capture would be really bad.”
Altman shared his enthusiasm for how AI can free up people from mundane tasks, accelerate scientific findings and cure diseases. He also believes it can vastly improve education and make millions of people richer.
Richer World
AI has the ability to produce “a lot of material abundance” and “create incredible economic value” is how Altman puts it.
As to what society can expect from artificial intelligence, Altman says it is nowhere near its capabilities. If ChatGPT were graded on a scale of 1 to 5, with 5 being the most sophisticated, it’s only at Level 1, Altman says.
As to whether superhuman artificial intelligence will make people irrelevant, Altman is quick to dismiss that fear. “I actually don’t think we’re all going to be extinct,” he says. “I think it’s going to be great.”
Envisioning a future powered by AI is hard for people to do, he says, because “humans are very bad at having intuition for exponentials.”
To begin to envision what AI will mean to society in the future, Altman, himself an investor in technology startups and nuclear energy companies, asks people to look back at other big inventions in the history of mankind:
“Humans are remarkably adaptable to any amount of change….. People love it already, and I think they’re going to love it a lot more.”
One of the biggest changes, Altman says, is new jobs that AI will create that no one can yet picture. Alluding to the corollaries of how computers changed jobs in the late 20th century and during the industrial revolution of 1760 to 1840, he says:
‘Sillier Jobs’
“The way we define work always moves. Like, our jobs would not have seemed like real jobs to people several hundred years ago. This would have seemed like incredibly silly entertainment….
“The jobs of the future may seem even sillier to us — but I hope the people get even more fulfillment in our society out of them. Everybody can have a really great quality of life to a degree that I think we probably just can’t imagine now.”