Open AI is a leading artificial intelligence research company with a mission to ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity. It was co-founded in 2015 by prominent tech investor Sam Altman and AI researcher Ilya Sutskever, amongst other scientists. The company has grown significantly over the past five years, leading Altman to compare Open AI to the Manhattan Project – the code name for the U.S. government’s research and development project to build the world’s first nuclear bombs during World War II. According to a New York Times interview with Altman, the project was a similar ambition as to what Open AI hopes to achieve.
Sam Altman is the co-founder and former CEO of Open AI. He has become a recognizable figure in the tech world, and started his career as a venture capitalist and the president of Y Combinator. After Y Combinator, Altman spearheaded the creation of Open AI, and served as its CEO until stepping down in late 2020. Regarding Open AI’s mission, Altman believes that technological advances should be supervised and regulated, and that is why the company has a joint safety board, overseen by Microsoft CTO Kevin Scott, to roll back any potentially dangerous product releases. Altman also supports the idea of universal basic income as a means of compensating jobs that are replaced by AI advances.
Over the years, Open AI has met with both criticism and praise concerning their machine learning projects. In February 2019, Microsoft pledged $1 billion to invest in Open AI, which sparked concern from many people. It has been argued that the rapid advancement of Open AI presents a potential risk to humanity. Last year, 36% of respondents to a New York University survey stated that AI had the potential to lead to nuclear-level catastrophe. Coupled with this is a recent open letter to Open AI signed by many prominent figures, including Elon Musk and Steve Wozniak, which calls for a six-month break in the development of tech to understand its capabilities and to ensure safety and control. Additionally, the AI chatbot created by Open AI, ‘ChatGPT’, was recently blocked by the Italian data protection agency due to a data breach.
Despite many of these legal and ethical issues, Open AI continues to progress with its mission. It is hoped that by closely regulating the advances in machine learning, Open AI will be able to achieve its goal of ensuring artificial general intelligence will benefit all of humanity.
