Altman, who is the man behind ChatGPT, was addressing an interactive session organized by The Economic Times in the national capital about the impact of AI revolution on businesses, jobs and economies like India.
Speaking at the session, Altman said that every technological revolution leads to changes in the job market and AI is not an exception.
As it happened: OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s interaction with Times Internet Vice-Chairman Satyan Gajwani
“In two generations, we can kind of adapt to any amount of labour market change and there are new jobs. That is going to happen here [with AI]. Some jobs are going to go away. But there will be new better jobs that are difficult to imagine,” Altman said.
During a conversation with Times Internet Vice-Chairman Satyan Gajwani, Altman said that we are on an “exponential curve” vis-a-vis AI revolution and it would be a mistake to just focus on the current AI systems such as ChatGPT and their various flaws.
“The rate of AI progress in the coming years will be significant. A future AI system can radically improve education, cure diseases, etc,” Altman said.
Speaking about his company OpenAI, which is a key player in the ongoing AI revolution, Altman said that the tech giant wants to be a force that can mitigate the risks associated with these systems so that we can ultimately reap the benefits.
“OpenAI is about a quest. This is one of the coolest things that humanity has ever built. We want to make sure people get that benefit,” he said.
Risks and capabilities
During the QnA round at the session, Samir Jain, Vice-Chairman and Managing Director of the Times Group, asked Sam Altman if AI can make something (like a robot) capable of expressing greater love than humans.
The OpenAI CEO replied that he hopes people do not fall in love with robots.
“I hope we don’t all fall in love with robots. I hope we all become better versions of ourselves with these AI systems helping us as coaches and therapists. I am okay with AI making good classical music but not about people falling in love with robots,” he said.
To a question by Times Group’s Samir Jain about the risks of AI falling into the hands of a dictator, Altman said that the possibility is indeed “very scary” and we must build tools to prevent that.
“I do think there are Sci-Fi concerns about AI which will turn out to be wrong. But the idea of a dictator possibly using AI to oppress people is very scary. We need to build systems in a way to address that risk and that is going to be a very complicated geopolitical challenge,” Altman said.
We have explicitly said there should be no regulation on smaller companies. The only regulation we have called for is on ourselves and people bigger than us
Sam Altman
Trust factor
Asked about concerns regarding the use of AI systems to spread fake content and images, Altman said that while he does have some fears about it, the society will develop techniques to counter these threats.
“We, as a society, will rise to the occasion. … we will have techniques like watermarking detectors very quickly. More importantly, in the future if people are saying something really important, they will cryptographically sign it,” he said, adding that people will adapt to these challenges.
Altman pointed out that such concerns were raised with tools like photoshop too, but people learned over time to tell if an image is photoshopped or not. “Society can build antibodies very quickly,” he added.
Extinction risk
Altman also dismissed fears that current AI technologies can pose a threat to humanity but sounded caution about the future.
“I don’t think current AI systems are dangerous. But ChatGPT 10 may be an extremely different thing. We have to put in a lot of effort on how to align an AGI (Artificial general intelligence) and it is super important to design safe systems at this kind of scale. We are developing techniques to mitigate the risk,” Altman said.
‘India has truly embraced ChatGPT’
Altman said that India has been a country that has truly embraced language model ChatGPT.
“There is a lot of early adoption and real enthusiasm from the users,” Altman noted during his interaction with Times Internet’s Gajwani.
Later in the session, Altman also said that with G20, India can play a huge role in the global conversation about AI regulations.
Asked about AI baises when it comes to languages and the systems being western-focused, Altman said that while transitioning from GPT3.5 to GPT4, OpenAI introduced several non-English languages.
“It’s not just the language, but also history, culture and values. We want the entire world represented in here,” he said, when asked how it can be useful in countries like India.
AI in the real world
At a fun session during their interaction, Times Internet’s Satyan Gajwani asked Altman to imagine himself in different roles to help us “do our jobs better”.
If he were a CEO of a hospital …
Altman: Doctors are using ChatGPT to help come up with new ideas for tricky cases and are getting great results in many cases.
If he were working at a bank
Altman: The consumer experience at banking is still quite terrible and a lot of it can be replaced by chatting with a large language model (LLM).
If he were a media professional …
Altman: One of the things we have heard from journalists is that AI helps them do boring parts of their jobs better. Thus, I would encourage them to start using it.
On his fears and the road ahead
On what excites him the most about the future of AI, Altman said it is the prospect of such systems improving the overall quality of lives of humans.
“I think if AI systems can contribute towards the additional understanding of the world, towards better science & technology, it will help improve quality of life. We are not there yet, but I think we will get there in the future,” he said.
The OpenAI CEO also spoke about his fears regarding AI.
“What I lose the most sleep over is the hypothetical idea that we already have done something really bad by launching ChatGPT. That maybe there was something hard and complicated in there (the system) that we didn’t understand and have now already kicked it off,” Altman said.
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