In response to the open letter regarding Artificial Intelligence (AI) development by tech industry bigwigs, including Elon Musk and hundreds of others, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said the letter “lacked technical nuance about where we need the pause”. The letter requested a six-month break on developing AI models that are more advanced than OpenAI’s GPT-4, the latest version of the popular chatbot ChatGPT.
When addressing the letter, Altman said that he agreed with many aspects of it and that OpenAI took a lot of time to research and analyze the safety of the model before releasing it in the public domain. He also pointed out that the letter had claimed that OpenAI is currently training GPT-5 which he denied, overstating that they ‘will not do so for some time’.
Reid Hoffman, the co-founder of LinkedIn made a claim that Musk’s signature on the letter was an expression of jealousy since he had left OpenAI in 2018. He regarded the letter as a tactic to set a pause on the AI development so that other projects like Musk’s can catch up and offer their own AI products.
Altman also pointed out that OpenAI is currently developing additions to GPT-4 which may possess safety issues and need to be addressed adequately. He said that as AI capabilities become more advanced, the safety protocols must be increased as well. In addition, he believes OpenAI must continue to be honest about its progress with AI and encourage discussion and debate so as to understand the positives and negatives of the technology.
OpenAI is an American for-profit artificial intelligence research laboratory founded in 2015 and was initially a not-for-profit subsidiary of tech company, the “OpenAI Validator Group”. It is currently owned by Microsoft and serves millions of users around the world.
Sam Altman is a renowned American entrepreneur and investor. He is the co-chairman of OpenAI and runs Y Combinator (YC). He was a very successful investor and entrepreneur before he got invested in OpenAI. With YC, Altman has funded and helped propel the success of numerous start ups such as Airbnb, Dropbox, Coinbase, etc., Altman currently sits on several boards, including Stripe, Microsoft, and a variety of Y Combinator organizations representing a variety of industries.
