OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has called for a global agency to be created to regulate artificial intelligence, which he believes could be capable of “significant global harm” in the “not-so-distant future”.
The entrepreneur and investor is a leading figure in AI, having co-founded the organization behind ChatGPT. However, he’s warned there could be a dark future ahead without an international agency to regulate the tech globally.
“I think there will come a time in the not-so-distant future — like we’re not talking decades and decades from now — where frontier AI systems are capable of causing significant global harm,” he said on the “All-In” podcast.
Altman wants to see “an international agency looking at the most powerful systems and ensuring reasonable safety testing.”
“I’d be super nervous about regulatory overreach here. I think we get this wrong by doing way too much or a little too much. I think we can get this wrong by doing not enough,” he added.
And he believes legislation isn’t enough after the Artificial Intelligence Act was passed because AI is ever-evolving.
“The reason I’ve pushed for an agency-based approach for kind of like the big-picture stuff and not like a write-it-in-law is, in 12 months, it will all be written wrong,” Altman said.
He believes AI should have a safety framework just like airplanes.
“When, like, a significant loss of human life is a serious possibility — like airplanes or any number of other examples — where I think we’re happy to have some sort of testing framework. I don’t think about an airplane when I get on it. I just assume it’s going to be safe,” Altman added.
