Altman Fears AI Control Could Concentrate in Too Few Hands
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said he fears AI will be controlled by a handful of companies or people, and warned against sacrificing liberty for safety. He also predicted a slower-than-expected boom in small businesses powered by AI.
Altman told podcaster David Senra that he is also worried AI could one day escape human control, but paradoxically, the fear of such risks could lead to the first situation. He said many people are so nervous about the magnitude of those risks that they feel a need to protect the world by trading liberty for safety.
His comments appeared to be a thinly veiled reference to rival Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, a vocal alarmist who has stressed the need for safeguards. In June, Amodei warned that Anthropic's newly developed Mythos model presented very real risks to cybersecurity and could wreak havoc if misused.
Amodei has become a strong advocate for government regulation, but Altman disagrees, saying that heading in that direction would mean giving up liberty for safety. Last month, Anthropic refused to endorse open-weight models, which are essentially open-source AI. Major Chinese AI companies release open-weight models, matching the capabilities of Anthropic's and OpenAI's best models at far lower cost. Nvidia, Microsoft and Meta argue that U.S. model makers should adopt the open-weight approach or lose market share to Chinese competitors. OpenAI has released some open-weight models, but Anthropic has not released any.
Altman also told Senra that the AI industry has failed to show how the technology can grant people more autonomy and opportunities. He predicted the greatest boom in people starting smaller businesses, but conceded it will arrive slower than he once believed. He admitted his initial timeline was wrong, saying he thought disruption would come quickly after GPT-4, but now realizes the economy has too much inertia for overnight change.
He said organizations cannot move as fast as AI models improve because they must adjust software, data access, compliance, budgets, employee roles and customer expectations. Altman views this lag as positive, making the transition smoother and slower and acting as a stabilizing force against economic and social disruption.