OpenAI chief says AI’s economic growth and human benefits are too great to ignore

Sam Altman says artificial intelligence will become as unavoidable as electricity, arguing that its potential economic value and benefits for people are too large to ignore.

Speaking at a G20 meeting of innovation ministers in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, the OpenAI chief executive said AI adoption was “non-negotiable.” He said the technology could create economic growth, benefit people and add value to countries.

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I think it is non-negotiable that you use it. The economic growth and benefits for people that can come from this technology, the value it can bring to a country, are too great to ignore.

Altman predicted that AI would generate “the biggest entrepreneurial explosion in history” by giving more people the tools to create and develop businesses. Someone with a strong idea but without enough capital, experts or supply-chain resources could use AI to handle those needs, he said.

“Over a decade from now, people will not talk about artificial intelligence as much,” Altman said. He argued that children growing up today would never know a world in which every product and service they use was not intelligent, capable and useful.

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If you have a great idea, but you do not have the resources or ability to raise enough capital, hire enough experts to work on it, figure out what is needed to invent something new in science, or manage a complex supply chain, you can now do all of that with the help of AI.

Altman also drew a comparison with the spread of electricity. “I think it would be about as absurd to say that we will not have AI in our country as it would have been to say, more than 100 years ago, that we will not have electricity in our country,” he said.

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I think it would be about as absurd to say that we will not have AI in our country as it would have been to say, more than 100 years ago, that we will not have electricity in our country.

At the same time, he warned that cybersecurity was among the biggest challenges of the AI era. “I think some things will go very badly in cybersecurity if people do not act with enough urgency,” he said, adding that failures in cyber defence and other areas could set the technology back substantially.

The European Commission has designated ChatGPT as a very large online service under the Digital Services Act. For users in the European Union, the designation brings greater transparency, stricter rules on advertising and recommendation systems, clearer systems for reporting and appealing content, and additional obligations to protect minors. The designation applies to ChatGPT’s online search function and is not a sanction.

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I think some things will go very badly in cybersecurity if people do not act with enough urgency.