OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman has outlined two scenarios in which artificial intelligence could end “very badly,” renewing his call for a more measured approach to the technology’s breakneck development.
Altman, whose company created ChatGPT, detailed his fears in a post on X late Sunday, days after a stark warning from an AI whistleblower heightened scrutiny around the industry.
“There are two ways AI could go very badly and that we must avoid,” Altman wrote.
The first, he said, would be humanity losing control over where AI development ultimately leads — an outcome he described as unacceptable.
“We are unapologetically on Team Humanity and AI must always serve people,” Altman said. He argued that AI alignment and safety measures must advance faster than the growing capabilities of increasingly powerful models.
His second major concern centers on the concentration of power in the hands of too few people or organizations.
Altman warned that an extraordinarily powerful AI controlled by a single individual or company could be used to force that group’s worldview on everyone else, creating what he said could be an “extremely dystopian” future.
Citing those risks, the OpenAI CEO said he is working alongside other technology leaders to slow the pace of AI progress as the sector continues to evolve rapidly.
Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, has identified two paths that could see the fast-moving artificial intelligence boom end “very badly.”
Altman has urged a slowdown in the development of rapidly advancing AI technology.
Jacob Coxon, a former researcher for OpenAI and Anthropic, the companies behind chatbots ChatGPT and Claude, joined Baier on Wednesday for a Special Report
‘When we talk about “pacing,” we don’t mean “stopping,”‘ he shared in an earlier post.
‘Progress has been rapid and will continue to be. But it should be slower than it otherwise could be,’ he said, noting that safety issues could come with serious costs.
‘Pacing will be well worth the cost,’ Altman then argued. ‘No amount of American competitive pressure should justify recklessness, or let capabilities get ahead of alignment and monitoring.’
‘The world deserves confidence that American companies developing increasingly capable AI will act responsibly, especially as the trajectory of progress has steepened,’ he added.
RELATED: AFL WAGs’ Close-Knit Circle Turns Out for Melbourne Races
‘Every frontier lab must deliver on this, and there is no reason any of us should come to work if we cannot.’
Altman’s plea comes after the resignation of whistleblower Jacob Coxon, who said that AI is posing an existential threat to humanity as he stepped away from his role with AI firm Anthropic.
Coxon announced his departure in a social media post on Tuesday and warned that companies like Anthropic and OpenAI are not ‘acting responsibly.’
‘I resigned from Anthropic today,’ he wrote on X. ‘I spent the last three years doing pretraining research at both OpenAI and Anthropic.
‘Neither company is acting responsibly. They are racing straight to self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives.’
Coxon announced he quit the business through social media on Tuesday and warned that neither company is ‘acting responsibly’
Superintelligence is the point at which an artificial system becomes more powerful than any individual, company or even nation.
Coxon continued to plead with the public on X. ‘Do not underestimate the power of this technology,’ he wrote.
‘These will soon be superhuman systems that can hack anything, revolutionize any field overnight, and acquire real power and resources.
‘We have all witnessed the progress in each of these domains, and progress is not slowing.
‘The people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade. This is not a marketing stunt.’
He claimed that while executives and senior researchers ‘couch their phrasing in the press to sound sensible,’ they are privately expressing similar concerns.
Geoffrey Hinton, a Canadian researcher often referred to as the ‘Godfather of AI’ – has similarly warned that super-intelligent systems could ‘lead to human extinction.’
‘We would be very foolish to develop superintelligence now, when there is no scientific consensus it can be developed safely and controllably,’ Dr Hinton said.
‘Losing control over AI smarter than ourselves could be catastrophic and could even lead to human extinction.’