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Sam Altman, the PT Barnum of the AI industry, has a message for people concerned about the technology he’s dedicated his life to advancing: Don’t worry, the nerds are on it.
Let’s go back a little.
Altman, a 39-year-old venture capitalist and CEO of OpenAI, spoke with journalist Andrew Ross Sorkin on Wednesday at the New York Times Dealbook Summit. Altman was as usual, gentle but disarmingly kind, almost acting you forget that he is a billionaire who is preparing the end of the world and who has also repeatedly warned of the risks of artificial intelligence.
At one point, Sorkin asked, “Do you believe the government, or anyone, will figure out how to avoid” the existential threats posed by “superintelligent” AI systems?
Spot the shy guy’s deviation.
“I am confident that researchers will be able to avoid this,” Altman replied. “I think there is a set of technical problems that the smartest people in the world are going to work on. And you know, I’m a little overly optimistic by nature, but I guess they’ll realize that.
He goes on to suggest, without elaborating, that perhaps the AI itself will be so intelligent that it will simply know how to control itself.
“We have this magic…” Altman said before correcting himself. “No magic. We have this incredible science called deep learning that can help us solve these very difficult problems.
Oh yes. And ExxonMobil will solve the climate crisis…
Look, it’s hard not to be charmed by Altman, who did not respond to a request for comment. He carries himself with the peace of knowing that even if his technology destroys the world economy, he will be safe in his coastal bunker in California. “I have weapons, gold, potassium iodide, antibiotics, batteries, water, Israeli Defense Force gas masks and a large plot of land in Big Sur that I can go to fly,” he said. said The New Yorker in 2016.)
But for the rest of us, it would be nice to hear Altman, or one of his fellow AI proponents, explain what exactly they mean when they say things like “we’ll find out “.
Even AI researchers admit that they still don’t understand precisely how the technology actually works. AI systems are essentially black boxes which constitute “a threat of extinction for the human species”, according to a report commissioned by the US Department of State.
Even if researchers could sort through the technical mumbo jumbo and solve what they call the “alignment problem,” ensuring that AI models don’t become world-destroying monster robots, Altman admits there would be would always have problems someoneor a government, to repair.
At the Dealbook Summit, Altman once again placed the responsibility for regulating technology on an international body of rational adults who don’t want to kill each other. He told Sorkin that even if “even if we can make this (super-intelligent model) technically safe, which I suppose we will understand, we’re going to have to have some confidence in our governments… It’s going to have to be about ‘global coordination… I suppose we will be up to the task, but it seems a challenge.
That’s a lot of guesswork, and it reflects a myopic understanding of, like, how policymaking and global coordination actually work: that is, slowly, inefficiently, and often not at all.
This is a naivety that needs to be put to rest by the one percent in Silicon Valley, who are eager to integrate AI into every device we use despite the technology’s shortcomings. Which doesn’t mean it’s useless! AI is being used to do all kinds of cool things, like helping disabled or elderly people, like my colleague Clare Duffy reported. And some AI models are doing exciting things with biochemistry (which frankly boggles my mind, but I trust the honest-to-God ones). scientists who won the Nobel Prize for this earlier this year).
Yet AI’s brightest stars, who understand the range of the technology’s potential better than most, seem shockingly blasé about the lack of regulation in this regard.
Perhaps the spectacle of naivety is part of Altman’s image. In the same interview on Wednesday, the OpenAI CEO made other hard-to-believe statements, like when he suggested he wasn’t motivated by the billions of dollars in equity he could get from the company. company – he simply loved his job.
And later, Altman also tried to tamp down speculation about his dramatic fallout with his OpenAI co-founder Elon Musk, who has since founded his own AI company, xAI, and become a member of the inner circle of the President-elect Donald Trump.
When asked if he was concerned that Musk would abuse his new influence and risk excluding competitors from xAI and his other tech companies, Altman responded, strangely, that he wasn’t losing sleep over that.
“I firmly believe Elon will do the right thing,” he said. “It would be profoundly un-American to use political power, to the extent that Elon has it, to harm your competitors and benefit your own businesses.”