During a Senate Judiciary subcommittee hearing on Tuesday, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman expressed his concern that artificial intelligence (AI) could cause significant harm to the world if it is not adequately regulated.
Altman acknowledged that AI has the potential to cause substantial harmful disruption for people and that his worst fears are that the technology industry causes significant harm to the world. "I think that could happen in a lot of different ways. It's why we started the company," he said.
Altman added that if the technology goes wrong, it can go entirely wrong, and OpenAI wants to work with the government to prevent that.
Altman's admission, and comments from him and other witnesses about the need for government regulation around AI, prompted Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., to note that companies rarely come to Congress to say, "please regulate us." Subcommittee Chairman Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., said one of his worries is job loss, and Altman acknowledged that jobs would likely be affected.
"Like with all technological revolutions, I expect there to be significant impact on jobs, but exactly what that impact looks like is very difficult to predict," he said.
Altman also said he was optimistic about how jobs might evolve around this new technology. "I believe that there will be far greater jobs on the other side of this, and the jobs of today will get better," he said. "I think it will entirely automate away some jobs, and it will create new ones that we believe will be much better."
However, Altman acknowledged that the government should step in to make sure these changes are managed. "There will be an impact on jobs. We try to be very clear about that, and I think it will require partnership between the industry and government but mostly action by government to figure out how we want to mitigate that," he said. "But I'm very optimistic about how great the jobs of the future will be."
The top Republican on the subcommittee, Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., said he's worried about how AI might be used to create fake campaign ads to sway people with false information in the run-up to elections. Altman agreed that this is a "significant area of concern" and said it would be "quite wise" for the government to pursue regulations.
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