Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, the company behind many popular and powerful AI-powered tools such as ChatGPT, Sora and the underlying technology called GPT, was asked during an interview if he was worried about losing control of AGI once its created.
Skip to 1:41:33
Altman sat down for an interview with Lex Fridman on the “Lex Fridman Podcast,” where he was asked if he worries about “losing control of the AGI itself“, as there are many people out there, including numerous security researchers concerned about the creation of a super-intelligent AI system and the implications that has on the planet through existential risk. Fridman prefaces the question by saying that “losing control” would not be because of “state actors, not because of security concerns, but because of the AI itself“.
The OpenAI CEO responded promptly by saying, “That is not my top worry as I currently see things.” Adding, “there have been times I worried about that more. There may be times again in the future where that’s my top worry. That’s not my top worry right now.” Fridman followed up by asking “What’s your intuition about that not being your top worry,” adding “do you think we could be surprised?“.
Altman responded by saying, “For sure, of course. I think we need to work on it super hard and we have great people here who do work on that. I think there is a lot of other things we also have to get right“.
The OpenAI CEO goes on to explain that AGI becoming so power that humans lose control of it is classified, to him, as a “theatrical risk” and that many well-meaning AI security researchers that delved into this issue “got super hung up on this one problem.“
However, Altman says that he’s “actually happy that they do that because I think we do need to think about this more.” But, Altman says that getting hung up on this one issue pushed many significant AI-related risks out of the discourse.