ChatGPT CEO admits he is ‘afraid’ the bot could be used for ‘massive disinformation and cyber-attacks’
Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, admitted he is afraid of ChatGPT’s capabilities, but more importantly how people will use it
OpenAI’s CEO revealed that he is “afraid” that ChatGPT “could be used for large-scale disinformation and offensive cyber-attacks.”
Sam Altman recently spoke to ABC NEWS about the company’s chatbot and the rollout of the latest iteration of the AI language model, GPT-4.
While the chatbot has fueled fears of AI world domination, Altman sees humans as the biggest threat to the technology.
“There will be other people who don’t respect some of the safety limits that we have,” he told ABC News.
“Society, I think, only has a limited amount of time to figure out how to respond to that, how to regulate that, how to deal with it.”
OpenAI launched GPT-4 last week, touting it as more powerful than its predecessor — so much so that it could be “damaging.”
The bot accepts input in the form of both images and text, but still outputs its responses in text, meaning it can provide detailed image descriptions.
The company warned that the model is still prone to “hallucinating” imprecise facts – and can be persuaded to publish false or harmful content.
“What I try to warn people about the most is what we call the ‘hallucination problem,'” Altman said.
“The model will confidently say things as if they were facts that are completely made up.”
While the chatbot has fueled fears of AI world domination, Altman sees humans as the biggest threat to the technology
During the interview, Altman admitted that GPT-4 is “not perfect,” but can write computer code in most programming languages and pass the Uniform Bar Exam at the 90th percentile
However, Altman sees GPT-4 turn red in the hands of people who use its power for evil.
“I am particularly concerned that these models could be used for large-scale disinformation,” Altman told ABC NEWS.
“As they get better at writing computer code, they can be used for offensive cyberattacks.”
He also touched on another fear that was spreading around the world: AI taking over human jobs.
Altman is not blind to the fact that technology will replace some careers and believes it could happen sooner than we think.
“I think in a few generations, humanity will have proven that it can adapt wonderfully to major technological shifts,” Altman said.
“But if this happens in a single-digit number of years, some of these shifts… That’s the part I’m most concerned about.”
GPT-4 is now available to subscribers via ChatGPT: free users will still experience the older GPT-3.5.
OpenAI co-founder Greg Brockman said at SXSW this month that fears of AI tools taking over people’s jobs were overblown — and that AI would free people up to focus on important work.
“The most important thing will be these higher-level skills — judgment and knowing when to dig into the details,” he said.
“I think the real story here, in my mind, is an amplification of what people can do.”
