Sam Altman warns AI could go "very badly" as race accelerates
ChatGPT boss Sam Altman has warned that the future of AI could go ‘very badly’ if the technology’s rapid progress continues to be developed.
The OpenAI CEO shared his concerns in a series of posts on X, saying there were two outcomes the industry ‘must avoid’.
Writing on social media, Altman said: ‘First, we could lose control of the future of AI. That is unacceptable. We are unapologetically on Team Humanity and AI must always serve people.’
The 41-year-old continued by saying that ‘alignment and safety techniques’ must stay ahead of progress in model capabilities.
‘Second, we could end up in a world with too much concentration of power,’ he added.
‘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.’
Altman said that avoiding these two threats requires ‘walking a narrow middle path; for example, one country could gain too much power. Another example is one lab ending up with too much power’.
This comes after researcher Jacob Coxon resigned from Anthropic and publicly warned that artificial intelligence companies like OpenAI were ‘racing straight to self-improving superintelligence’.
Coxon claimed AI companies were ‘gambling with our lives’ and urged the public not to underestimate the technology.
He argued that future AI systems could become capable of hacking systems, transforming industries and acquiring significant power and resources.
Coxon also claimed that people building AI ‘earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade’ – although that remains his characterisation of the industry’s private concerns, rather than an established prediction.
In the wake of his comments, Anthropic’s chief executive Dario Amodei urged ‘frontier’ artificial intelligence companies to slow down.
Responding to his essay, Elon Musk said that ‘Dario is right’, while Altman said: ‘I agree with Dario that we need to pace the frontier.
‘This has been a primary topic of discussions we’ve had at OpenAI in recent weeks.
‘Committing to having independent evaluators with employee-like access is a great idea, and we will do the same. We’ll have more to share soon.’
US President Donald Trump, however, took a different view.
Speaking to the media, he said that ‘whoever wins AI, wins’, igniting talks of a race with China.
He also criticised industry figures for being ‘negative’ around the technology’s future.
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