OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is warning that the rapid advance of artificial intelligence could go “very badly” if humans lose control of increasingly powerful systems or if that power becomes concentrated in too few hands.
“There are two ways AI progress could go very badly and that we must avoid,” Altman wrote in a post on X.
The first, he said, is that humanity could “lose control of the future to AI.”
“This is unacceptable; we are unapologetically on Team Humanity, and AI must always serve people,” Altman wrote, arguing that alignment and safety techniques need to remain ahead of advances in AI capabilities.
The second danger, according to Altman, is an excessive concentration of power.
“If an extraordinarily powerful AI is used by one person or company to impress their worldview onto everyone else, the results could be extremely dystopian,” he wrote.
Altman said avoiding those outcomes will require navigating a “narrow middle path,” warning that either a single country or a single AI lab could ultimately accumulate too much power.
In a separate post, Altman called for consistent safety standards across companies developing the most advanced AI systems and said OpenAI supports a federal framework establishing safety requirements for frontier AI.
But Altman argued AI companies should not wait for Washington to act.
“The world deserves confidence that American companies developing increasingly capable AI will act responsibly, especially as the trajectory of progress has steepened,” he wrote.
Altman said OpenAI now develops explicit “safety cases” before certain frontier reinforcement-learning runs that are expected to significantly increase a model’s capabilities. He also called for shared industry standards around misalignment, monitoring and safety.
The OpenAI chief acknowledged that those precautions could slow AI development, but said the cost is justified.
“When we talk about ‘pacing’, we do not mean ‘stopping’,” Altman wrote. “Progress has been rapid and will continue to be. But it should be slower than it otherwise could be.”
“No amount of American competitive pressure should justify recklessness, or let capabilities get ahead of alignment and monitoring,” he added.
Altman said the federal government will ultimately be needed to help coordinate AI safeguards internationally, while arguing that American AI companies should begin taking steps themselves.
Read the full article here