Dubai: I think we can easily imagine a world, in the not-super distant future, where everybody has got a better life than people have today. I think we can raise the standard of living so incredibly much if everybody has access to abundant amounts of really high quality intelligence and they can use those tools to create whatever they want to do, that’s pretty amazing,” said Open AI Chief Executive Officer Sam Altman.
In conversation with the United Arab Emirates(UAE) Minister of State for Artificial Intelligence, Digital Economy and Remote Work Application Omar Al Olama, at the World Governments Summit in Dubai on February 13, Altman shared what he was most excited and fearful about regarding Artificial Intelligence (AI).
He said he was more fearful of the “sci-fi stuff” which was the “very subtle societal misalignments where we just have these systems out in society, and through no particular ill-intention, things just go horribly wrong.” However, he said that what excited him the most was the belief that “things are going to go tremendously right.”
“We’ve got to work hard to mitigate all of the downside cases. They are very significant and real potentials to confront. But, the reason that we think so hard about how to deploy this technology safely, is the upside is remarkable,” said Altman.
The Open AI CEO said there was still a long way to go and a lot to prove. “I think abundant intelligence and closely related abundant energy can unlock a future that is sort of difficult for me to imagine how good it could be.
“I think right now we don’t realize how limited we are by the limits on intelligence and how expensive it is and how difficult it is, but if you imagine a world where everyone gets a great personal tutor, great personalized medical advice, we can use these tools to discover all sorts of new science, cure diseases, help the environment and discover new physics, who knows what else.
“I think that’s pretty remarkable.” When asked about how close they were to the vision, Altman said the honest answer was that at this point they do not know. “This is new science, we’re discovering new things all the time.
“The rate of discovery is incredible. The rate of change is incredible. But it’s sort of hard to know exactly how far we have to go,” he shared, adding that scientists shared that their tools have made them more productive.
Regarding adaptability to AI, Altman said that when Chat GPT was first released, the most pushback was from the education sector. However, it was also in the education sector where this trend reversed the quickest.
“[…] I really believe this will be the most, it already is, and certainly will be one of the most transformative technologies for education that you have had in recent times.”
In response to a question about regulatory decisions a country such as the UAE should take, Altman said: “I would try to create more of a regulatory sandbox where people could experiment with this technology and be able to figure out, sort of like dream, imagine, whatever the world could like and then I would try to see what makes sense and what doesn’t and write the regulation around that.”
He added that at some point, some global system would be necessary as the impact of these systems would be “truly global”.