OpenAI CEO Sam Altman suddenly seems so disturbed by the nightmare-inducing AI monster he has helped create that he is having a hard time sleeping.
“There are two ways AI progress could go very badly, and that we must avoid,” Altman said in an X post at around 12:57 a.m. ET. “First, we could lose control of the future to AI. This is unacceptable; we are unapologetically on Team Humanity, and AI must always serve people. To ensure that, we need ways to ensure that alignment and safety techniques stay ahead of progress in model capabilities.”
He continued, “Second, we could end up in a world with too much concentration of power. If an extraordinarily powerful AI is used by one person or company to impress their worldview onto everyone else, the results could be extremely dystopian. Avoiding these two threats requires walking a narrow middle path; for example, one country could gain too much power. Another example is one lab ending up with too much power.”
Within the course of two days, AI titans at Anthropic (ANTH.PVT), CEO Dario Amodei and Altman, have managed to scare the hell out of the human race with the powerful technology they created and pushed their teams full of pioneering super-coders to supercharge.
“Over the last few months, I have become convinced that fully addressing the risks requires even more prudence — not just investing in risk prevention, but pacing the rate of capabilities advancement so that risk prevention has time to keep up,” Amodei stated in a 3,800-word essay on Saturday. “We must slow the pace at which we improve the capabilities of A.I. models. Progress will still seem fast, and we must make wise use of the time we gain.”
Altman said right after the post that he agreed with his rival.
The announcements come after two AI researchers voiced concerns about the dangers posed by advanced frontier AI models.
Early last week, Jacob Coxon announced his resignation from Anthropic, saying that neither the company nor OpenAI is acting responsibly when it comes to developing powerful AI systems.
Anthropic’s Alignment Science Lead, Evan Hubinger, then replied to Coxon’s post, saying the former Anthropic worker is correct and that he believes there is a greater-than-10% chance that the technology could “kill all humans.”
President Trump on Sunday pushed back on the safety concerns, saying, “We’re leading China in AI. We’re the most sophisticated country in the world, and frankly, I want to keep it that way because whoever wins AI wins,” Reuters reported.
