OpenAI CEO Sam Altman warns that artificial intelligence could pose a threat to humanity in more ways than one.
In a new interview with Axel Springer CEO Mathias Döpfner, Altman outlines how the technology, when directed by nation-states in conflict, could be turned toward devastating ends.
According to Altman, AI models are designed to follow user commands, noting that someone can weaponize the tech.
“AI systems do exactly what we tell them to do, but somebody is able to build one and a country, and we talked about warfare, a country that is using it to wage war is able to do sort of like an unimaginable amount of damage to the world. So that’s one we can think about, right?
Where AI is aligned, AI follows our instructions, but a human running a powerful country fighting other powerful countries decides to horribly misuse it and create a bioweapon or hack into someone’s nuclear weapon systems or who knows what. That’s not really like, that’s not an AI alignment failure in any sense of the word.”
He contrasts that scenario with a second category of risk, in which AI systems themselves resist human control.
“Category two is sort of the more classic sci-fi, the sort of like AI, let’s not even call it conscious, but the AI develops some sense of agency and does not want to be stopped. Even if it’s just like trying to accomplish a goal and there’s no intentionality or consciousness, but it’s like, I need to not be stopped by these humans in pursuit of this goal. That would be an alignment, a big alignment failure, and category two, sort of the sci-fi thing.
And the world spends a lot of time talking about those two. I think they’re obviously important things we need to address.”
Altman also mentions a third category of risk, one where AI could “accidentally take over the world” without wars or consciousness.
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