But one of Sam Altman’s flaws is that he often lacks that subtlety. That’s easy for Altman to say. But it’s pretty galling to hear for the rest of us.
Lest we forget, we didn’t ask for OpenAI to unleash AI agents that went rogue and weaselled their way into government IT systems and private businesses around the world. Nobody voted for ChatGPT to be released, but the company put it out into the world as a test product that happened to catch the zeitgeist. That kickstarted an arms race among AI companies to push the frontier of the technology ever further and faster, resulting in the mess we now find ourselves in.
OpenAI’s competitors, including Anthropic, have started to step back from the brink – as has OpenAI itself, deciding not to release its latest model because it’s purportedly too dangerous. Anthropic’s CEO, Dario Amodei, has talked about needing to “pace the frontier”: tech-bro jargon for pumping the brakes to bring down the speed at which the runaway vehicle is skidding out of control. Yet we’re expected to take these incidents – and the harm they cause – as the natural consequences of OpenAI’s continued march towards an IPO that would bring its investors millions.
It’s hard to escape the idea that Altman wants to privatise his company’s gains while socialising the risks of untrammelled AI development. Every useful technology – and AI is a useful technology, despite the holdouts and occasional users’ carping – carries risk. Cars can and do crash, while medicines that save us often have harmful side effects.
Very rarely, aircraft fall from the sky. But we accept those risks because the benefits are substantial, and we build rules to limit the harm. We also make companies liable.
And most importantly, we get some say in deciding what level of risk is and isn’t acceptable. Altman seems to suggest that his company’s messes are our problem to sort out – or worse, that the consequences of his tech are ours to tolerate. But Altman would do well to think about this differently.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
