Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, is at the center of discussions concerning the development of ChatGPT. After the presentation of a letter signed by greats in the industry -including Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX- where the company was expressly asked to stop the development of artificial intelligence more advanced than the recently presented GPT-4, Altman has come out to issue his opinion on the matter. If you thought it was going to be diametrically opposed to what was stated in the petition, we are already telling you that you could have been wrong.
Like the great personalities who have stamped their name and signature on the letter, Sam Altman also has reservations about the advancement of models like ChatGPT. “I will try to be direct. Am I doing something good, or something very bad?” The executive commented in 2019 for an interview in the New York Times.
Even in 2023 and with the progress made, Altman still does not know how models will impact the world ChatGPT style. “The hype around these systems – even though everything we expect to be right in the long term – is totally out of control for the short term,” he commented to the NYT in a more recent interview.
ChatGPT, a technology with the potential of the atomic bomb… and the same dangers
During the conversations of the aforementioned medium with Altman, the CEO of OpenAI sometimes paraphrased Robert Oppenheimer, the leader of the Manhattan Project -in charge of designing the atomic bomb-. Here, he added that “technology happens because it is possible”, and ChatGPT is an example of this.
Thus, Sam Altman believes that the artificial intelligence will take place one way or another, as Bill Gates has already mentioned. Will it turn the world into a wasteland or into the expected utopia of The Jetsons? To do this, we still have to study the damage it could cause, in order to know how to counteract or contain it. Although the executive believes that we still have time to examine it, it must also be remembered that it is a timely stance towards the company.
Kelly Sims, an advisor to the OpenAI board of directors, told the NYT that “In a single conversation, you are on both sides of the debate“, referring to Sam Altman and recent concerns regarding the growth of ChatGPT and similar technologies.
However, the internal balance of the CEO of OpenAI opts for the more positive side that ChatGPT has to offer. In addition, thanks to the contract with investors such as Microsoft, the OpenAI board reserves the right to take the model offline at any time, as necessary.
Although in 2023 the dangers of a nuclear war seem more distant than in the middle of the last century, from time to time fears of a possible conflict of this style resurface. Will we live the same constant fear with ChatGPT and other artificial intelligences? Although until now they have done nothing more than demonstrate their usefulness in complementing human tasks, history reminds us that we are experts in weaponizing such benign tools as this one.