Dubai, United Arab Emirates — The CEO of Open AI, the firm that created ChatGPT, said Tuesday that the risk associated with artificial intelligence that keeps you up at night is that “very subtle social imbalance” can make systems destructive.
Speaking via video conference at the World Government Summit in Dubai, Sam Altman reiterated his call for a body similar to the International Atomic Energy Agency to oversee AI, which is likely advancing faster than the world expects. .
“There are some things in there where it's easy to imagine things going wrong. And I'm not so interested in the idea of killer robots walking down the street as I am in very subtle social imbalances, where having these systems in society and no particular evil intention, things go horribly wrong.”.
However, Altman stressed that the AI industry, such as the OpenAI firm, should not take the lead when drawing up the regulations that govern the sector.
“We are still in the phase of a lot of dialogue. Everyone has a conference. Someone has an idea, a standards document, and that's fine,” Altman said. “I think we're still at a point where healthy debate is needed, but at some point in the next few years, I think we'll have to move toward an action plan with real implications for the world.”
The artificial intelligence firm OpenAI, based in San Francisco, is one of the leaders in the sector. Microsoft has invested about $1 billion in OpenAI. The Associated Press has signed an agreement with OpenAI for access to its news archive. For its part, The New York Times is suing OpenAI and Microsoft for using its stories without authorization to train OpenAI chatbots.
The success of OpenAI has made Altman the public face of the rapid commercialization of generative AI, and of fears about what the new technology could bring.
The United Arab Emirates, an autocratic federation of seven kingdoms ruled by sheikhs who inherit the office, shows signs of those risks. Freedom of expression remains very restricted. These limits affect the flow of reliable information, and AI programs like ChatGPT are machine learning systems that rely on available information to develop their responses to users.
In the Emirates is the Abu Dhabi firm G42, supervised by the country's powerful national security advisor. G42 has what experts describe as the most prominent Arabic AI model in the world. The company has received accusations of espionage for its ties to a cell phone app identified as spyware. He has also faced accusations that he may have collected genetic material from Americans for the Chinese government.
G42 said it would cut ties with Chinese suppliers over American concerns. However, the conversation with Altman, moderated by Emirati State Minister for Artificial Intelligence Omar al-Olama, did not touch on any of the local concerns.
For his part, Altman said he was encouraged to see that schools, where teachers feared that students would use AI to do their jobs, are now accepting the technology as a crucial element for the future. But he added that AI is still taking its first steps.
“I think the reason is that the current technology we have is like … that first cell phone with a black and white screen,” Altman said. “So give us some time. I will tell you that I think in a few years it will be much better than now. And in a decade it should be quite striking.”