Sam Altman: People are right to be anxious about AI

[00:00:00] But to your point, we obviously don't know the answer. [00:00:02] I mean, when you introduced, I think it was 5.2, [00:00:05] you said it outperforms professionals across 44 occupations. [00:00:08] You can understand why there may be an AI backlash when people hear things like that. [00:00:12] Totally. [00:00:13] What I wish we had said then is that it outperforms professionals at small tasks in 44 occupations, [00:00:19] which is, I think, a more accurate thing. [00:00:22] And it is the people that are using these that are now seeing, you know, [00:00:25] incredible productivity growth, wage growth, all of the benefits from this. [00:00:29] But I think people are right to be anxious, and I understand it. [00:00:34] You know, this is like a, this is not even a technological shift that happens every generation. [00:00:39] This is one of the big ones. [00:00:41] If not one of, yeah, maybe the biggest. [00:00:43] Yeah. [00:00:44] And so it would be imprudent not to have some real caution around that. [00:00:47] Well, on that, you know, on the AI backlash, [00:00:49] and I have been speaking to a number of the leaders in the industry who have been saying [00:00:52] maybe we haven't done enough to articulate the benefits, which may be difficult to do. [00:00:57] But there's not just opposition to data centers like this. [00:00:59] There is a more significant, perhaps, opposition to what it's going to do to society. [00:01:04] How do you feel as the leader, one of certainly the key leaders in this, [00:01:09] in terms of your ability to combat that backlash? [00:01:14] Yeah. [00:01:15] So it's a huge challenge. [00:01:17] And again, as I said, I think this is like, there's something good about this. [00:01:20] Like, society should have antibodies against too rapid of change. [00:01:24] And there should, like, part of the reason that we believe in this strategy of iterative deployment [00:01:29] is we want society to see the technology. [00:01:31] We want society to really understand what's happening and have a chance to debate, react, [00:01:38] sort of say, hey, this doesn't make sense or this isn't going to work for me. [00:01:41] Like, this has got to be – I have no interest in, like, building a, you know, super smart AI that [00:01:46] accomplishes some non-human goals. [00:01:49] Like, this has got to be about something that is working for people and that people are at the center of it [00:01:54] and human values are what we drive forward. [00:01:57] So people should react. [00:01:59] People should say, hey, this is what I want and not this. [00:02:01] I don't think it's about not explaining the benefits because, you know, we say, hey, AI is going to cure a bunch of diseases. [00:02:08] And people say, okay, that's great. [00:02:10] But, like, that's not really my question. [00:02:11] My question is, you know, what is my role in the future? [00:02:14] What is my economic future? [00:02:15] What is my agency? [00:02:16] Like, how do I know that my kids, my family will still be able to have a fulfilling, you know, [00:02:25] creative expression, struggle to drive the world forward, to grow, to kind of do this thing together [00:02:31] in a way that has worked for a long time? [00:02:33] And when you have people in AI say, well, yeah, sure, there's going to be no jobs [00:02:39] or 50% of jobs are going to go away or 90% of jobs are going to go away [00:02:42] and, you know, AI is kind of going to be smarter than you at everything [00:02:44] and, you know, we'll give you some basic income, but there's, like, you're not really going to have a role. [00:02:51] That's horrible. [00:02:52] And by the way, you know, this AI company, maybe we're going to destroy all the jobs. [00:02:56] We'll be the most valuable company in the world. [00:02:58] People just look at you and you're like, yeah. [00:03:00] So I think it's a terrible message. [00:03:01] And I don't think it's that we haven't articulated the upsides. [00:03:04] I think people actually believe us. [00:03:05] Like, you know what? [00:03:06] Go cure cancer. [00:03:07] That sounds great. [00:03:08] I think we have failed to articulate as an industry how people stay in control [00:03:13] of determining the future at every step and have a really meaningful life [00:03:17] in all of the ways we care about. [00:03:20] Another part of it may be the pace of change itself. [00:03:22] I mean, you're releasing a major model, what is it, every six weeks or something like that? [00:03:26] It's very hard. [00:03:28] Things seem to be changing so quickly. [00:03:30] You know, I maybe, maybe you're right. [00:03:34] I don't think that's, I think at this point, people believe us that the models are getting smarter. [00:03:39] And, you know, there was a time when the first iPhones came out that every iPhone release was a huge deal [00:03:43] and people lined up overnight and got very excited. [00:03:45] And now I couldn't even tell you the number of the latest iPhone. [00:03:48] It's great. [00:03:48] It's amazing. [00:03:49] It's my favorite piece of technology. [00:03:51] But I expect it to continue to get better. [00:03:52] And I know they make a new one every year. [00:03:55] I kind of think the same thing for this technology, which is people expect the models to keep getting better. [00:04:04] What they really want to know is, like, what's going to happen with society? [00:04:07] Yeah. [00:04:07] And none of us, I mean, you don't really have the answer. [00:04:11] You can guess. [00:04:13] Of course, I don't have the answer entirely. [00:04:18] But what I can say is our whole effort, our whole company, is about giving this new kind of infrastructure [00:04:27] at massive scale to people and trusting that the democratization of power, of wealth, of opportunity, of agency [00:04:35] will continue to do this incredible story of civilization going forward. [00:04:41] I'm sorry. [00:04:42] No problem. [00:04:42] We're trying to figure out how much time you have left with us. [00:04:45] But we're in this race with China. [00:04:47] At least that's the way it's described. [00:04:49] And that is one reason why we're just full speed ahead. [00:04:52] Don't stop. [00:04:52] Build as many data centers as you can. [00:04:54] Move as quickly as you can. [00:04:56] I think in some ways that's okay, and in some ways that's really dangerous. [00:04:59] Like, I think it's fine to say, hey, we're going to win this. [00:05:04] We're going to have, you know, most of the economic benefit. [00:05:06] There will be some global scale safety issues. [00:05:11] And we have had time in the past, times in the past, like with the IAEA for atomic energy and weapons, [00:05:18] where the world comes together and says, you know, none of us should be taking global risk. [00:05:21] Different countries, different systems, they can sort of say, you know, [00:05:24] I'm going to treat economics this way. [00:05:26] You're going to treat it that way. [00:05:27] I'm going to think about using AI in health care this way. [00:05:29] You're going to think about using it that way. [00:05:31] But on the really big things, making sure we don't ever lose control of AI systems, [00:05:35] cybersecurity, biosecurity, I think we need to not treat this as a race [00:05:41] and treat this as a, like, a good future of the world isn't everyone's interest. [00:05:45] That's where we are right now.