‘No room for debate’ over human control of AI, says Sam Altman
People, not artificial intelligence, must stay in control of the future, OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman said on Monday. “There are a lot of other things we can debate, but on this one, we think there must be no room for debate,” he said in conversation with The National 's Editor-in-Chief Mina Al-Oraibi. Speaking at the opening ceremony of Adipec in Abu Dhabi, Mr Altman said there “should not…
OpenAI's CEO Sam Altman emphasized on Monday that humans must retain control over artificial intelligence, stating there should be "no room for debate" on the matter. Speaking at the opening ceremony of Adipec in Abu Dhabi, Altman expressed his belief that AI should be a tool built for people and serve their needs, rather than the other way around. He also noted that AI has crossed a significant threshold, outperforming the world's best scientists and demanding more power as its capabilities grow.
Altman warned that the industry must demonstrate its ability to prevent harm as AI systems become more capable, stressing the importance of safety and alignment. He highlighted the energy challenge faced by the AI industry, stating that while the energy needed for each AI query has decreased, demand is rapidly increasing. Six years ago, OpenAI's heaviest internal user consumed about 100,000 tokens a month, while today, the global per-capita average is roughly that figure, and the top user consumes about 500 billion tokens.
The CEO also noted that OpenAI had solved one of the Millennium Prize problems, a set of unsolved mathematical problems, using 10,000 agents running an upcoming GPT model for about four days, collaborating without a hierarchy. Altman praised the UAE as "the most forward-looking country in the world for AI adoption," with about 80% of young people in the country using ChatGPT.
Written by urgent.news from The National UAE's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
