“World Is Right To Be Afraid”: OpenAI CEO Sam Altman On AI Dangers At Dreamforce | DWS News | AI14

00:01[cheering]

00:08>> Thanks for having me. >> Great to have you, Sam. >> It's interesting cuz people have been talking about the potential downsides or serious risks of AI for some time. And I think a lot of people have been saying, "Why is this the moment where it sort of escaped the bubble and is now all of a sudden an international topic of such intensity?" And I think a few things have happened. One, the models have gotten so good. And people for a long time looked at the models. Maybe they looked at the rate of progress, but I don't think people really felt that the models were going to come this far, this fast. We will get it right, by the way. I am very confident in our I think the biggest thing that has

00:53changed is this thing that our industry has been talking about for a while, which is no, no, this technology, this approach is going to go very far. These models are in some ways going to become more capable, smarter than people. That finally happened. So, I think that was a big change to why now. And people say, you know, my probability of doom is X or Y or whatever, it hits in a different way. Technology to do. Somebody else wants to build like a hacking bot, okay. The world can decide what they think about that, but I think you also see um a real fear that some of these companies or some companies developing AI could get too much power and be able to sort of exert undue influence on the economy, push a

01:38worldview out on people. And I think the world is right to be afraid of this. So, we have these two big challenges. We have the potential of a loss of control accident or some other serious thing that could go wrong. too much power concentration and people fear that those developing AI could exert their worldview. Um and there is a sort of narrow path we have to navigate with pragmatism, with you know, steadiness, with the ability for the the world to like trust that we will make dependable decisions, consistent decisions uh through this. And I think people are saying, "Well, you know, this now seems pretty important. Like let's let's get it right." I'm not going to get the days of the week exactly right here, but something

02:25on like a Friday or a Saturday. These models have gotten so good, so fast, that we need to treat the alignment and monitoring and security with a new level of rigor. And we have to be willing to pace our development of capabilities such that capabilities always So such that alignment, safety, and monitoring are always ahead of capabilities. And the Hugging Face incident triggered a real reset, not just in our own company, but I think the whole industry. >> You know, we're in the cyber area today, but maybe we move into another area. Is this a fair way to characterization, or am I or is this unfair to characterize it like this? >> What I really care about is that we have got a great culture of accident

03:06reporting and learning. I think if we look at what happens with the FAA and the NTSB and how safe airplanes have gotten, um as I understand it from talking to people who have really studied, you know, new kinds of technology on the order of magnitude of airplanes, one of the things that has gone so well there is is the culture of accident reporting. You know, accidents are going to happen. We're going to learn as much as we can and react from each one. Um and if, you know, there's other kinds of technology where I don't think it's gone I don't think society's had the same response, and I don't think we have improved as much. to pull this thing together and present you with the information to make a

03:47decision or to ble I think this is one of the the profound changes to how we use technology that I've ever seen. I mean, sci-fi movies, as you mentioned, have been hinting at this or playing around with this for a long time, but this is one of those moments where it feels like you're in the movie. Like the sci-fi thing came true. You're talking to your personal super assistant, and you are working 10 times faster or better or more creatively than you could have before. >> Sam, you're invited back anytime you want to Dreamforce. Hold on, I'm >> Thank you very much. Thank you. >> Please thank Sam Altman.