This Is Why Sam Altman (OpenAI) Always Looks So Worried…
The burden of knowing something others don’t…
For a guy behind the most profound technological breakthrough, not just for our lifetimes, but, arguably, in human history, Sam Altman seems nonchalant with the distinction. In fact, quite the opposite. He always looks perturbed and uneasy, despite the flood of accolades his company’s product, ChatGPT, has received.
Why?
This might be why…
ChatGPT was released to the public on November 2022 under a cloud of internal disagreement between Altman and some OpenAI engineers. The engineers were afraid that the product was not yet ready to be handed to the public. Sam, for his part, was afraid that if they didn’t make the first move, some other X company would beat them to it.
So in his admission, Altman made a rare “contentious unilateral decision” to release ChatGPT.
And the rest…as they say, is history.
But not for Altman — who knows all too well the great benefits and the great harm some future AGI can bring to mankind. By releasing ChatGPT “unilaterally,” he’s on the precipice of history either as the man who brought all these beautiful things to mankind, or the man who ignored the advice of his engineers and unleashed “Terminator” on all of us.
To his great credit, Altman is not blind to these possibilities. That’s why he urges the government to move decisively and regulate the AI space.
Because the problem with AI, (which is also its blessing), is that it moves exponentially. It is location-agnostic, and it has so lowered the barrier to entry that virtually anybody can join the party.
It means once “something” is released to the public, and to the digital realm, no legislation on earth can catch up with it…much less stop it. (How can a law passed in Congress stop a code that’s in the international public domain, floating freely on the internet?)
That’s why some leaders are calling for pre-emptive moves on AI development. With the nature of AI, once we reach the “tipping point,” there’s no going back.
Nobody knows the future, in the meantime, I urge Sam Altman to…smile.
