Chatbot pioneer Sam Altman is warning the world needs to be “careful” with artificial intelligence as it could be used for “offensive cyber-attacks”.
The 37-year-old CEO of OpenAI, which developed the controversial consumer-AI tool ChatGPT, has warned the technology needs regulated to shield humanity from the negative consequences of its widespread use.
He told ABC News: “We’ve got to be careful here. I think people should be happy that we are a little bit scared of this.
“I’m particularly worried that these models could be used for large-scale disinformation.
“Now that they’re getting better at writing computer code, (they) could be used for offensive cyber-attacks.”
Sam also stressed chatbot-style technology could be “the greatest” humanity “has yet developed”.
And he said AI still only works under the direction of or input from humans.
Sam, worth an estimated $2 billion, added: “It waits for someone to give it an input.
“This is a tool that is very much in human control.”
But admitting he was worried about who was in control: “There will be other people who don’t put some of the safety limits that we put on. “Society, I think, has a limited amount of time to figure out how to react to that, how to regulate that, how to handle it.”
His remarks come after OpenAI launched its latest AI chat model, GPT-4, which Sam has admitted is “not perfect”.
But it scored 90% in the US on the bar exams and a near-perfect score on the high school SAT math test and can also write computer code in most programming languages.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk, 51, who was one of the first investors in OpenAI when it was still a non-profit company, has repeatedly warned AI is more dangerous than nuclear weapons.
He also asked on his Twitter platform: “What will be left for us humans to do?”
