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Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, at the Hope Global Forum annual meeting in Atlanta on December 11, 2023.
Dustin Chambers | Bloomberg | getty images
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman says concerns have grown that artificial intelligence will one day become so powerful that it will dramatically reshape and disrupt the world.
“It will change the world even less than we all think, and it will change jobs even less than we think,” Altman said in a conversation hosted by Bloomberg at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
Altman was specifically referring to artificial general intelligence or AGI, a term used to refer to a form of AI that can perform tasks at the same level or a step above humans.
He said that AGI could be developed in the “reasonably near future”.
Altman, whose company went mainstream after the public launch of the ChatGPIT chatbot in late 2022, has tried to ease AI skeptics’ concerns about the extent to which the technology will take over society.
Ahead of the debut of OpenAI’s GPT-4 model in March, Altman warned technologists not to get overexcited by its potential, saying that people would likely be “disappointed” by it.
“People are begging to be disappointed and they will be disappointed,” Altman said during a January interview with StrictlyTV. “We don’t have any real information [artificial general intelligence] And that’s what’s expected of us.”
Founded in 2015, OpenAI’s stated mission is to achieve AGI. Company, which is supported by Microsoft And with a private market valuation approaching $100 billion, he says he wants to design the technology safely.
Following Donald Trump’s victory in the Iowa Republican caucuses on Monday, Altman was asked whether AI could exacerbate economic inequalities and lead to displacement of the working class as the presidential election heats up.
“Yeah, definitely, I think it’s something worth thinking about,” Altman said. But he later said, “It’s a much bigger device than I expected.”
Altman said AI is not yet replacing jobs on the scale that many economists fear, and said the technology is already getting to the point where it is becoming an “incredible tool for productivity.”
Concerns about AI safety and OpenAI’s role in its protection were at the center of Altman’s brief ouster from the company in November, when the board said it had lost confidence in its leader. Altman was swiftly reinstated as CEO following widespread backlash from OpenAI employees and investors. Upon his return, Microsoft received a nonvoting board observer seat at OpenAI.
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