“Let’s have a system in place so that we can audit people who are doing it (developing AI-based solutions), licence it, and have safety tests before deployment. I think it is an important idea and we are pleasantly surprised about the enthusiasm there is around the world,” Altman said. He was speaking at The Economic Times Conversations, with journalists and industry leaders.
Speaking at the event, Altman, on questions about whether OpenAI’s stand on strict regulations was aimed at a regulatory capture of the technology to put down any competitor that may emerge in the future, stressed smaller companies should not be regulated. He further said India could take the lead in conversations around global regulation for AI, as it hosts the G20 summit later this year.
Altman said his company was delighted to see the adoption of and enthusiasm for ChatGPT in India.
“There is a lot of fear right now about the impact this is going to have on elections and our society and how we trust the media that we see… But there is a related thing that is relatively getting discussed less, which is customised, one-on-one interactive persuasion and I think people are going to be able to create that are very good at it,” Altman said.
Asked what impact generative AI solutions will have on jobs, especially in a market like India, Altman said: “Every tech revolution leads to job change. This is no exception. Some jobs will go away but there will be newer, better jobs. Maybe the problem is, we don’t have nearly enough people to do the jobs that we want to do.”
On the future of OpenAI and ChatGPT, he said there’s a lot of work to do before GPT 5. “There needs to be more safety audits. What I lose the most sleep over is the hypothetical idea that we already have done something really bad by launching ChatGPT. That maybe there was something hard and complicated in there (the system) that we didn’t understand and have already kicked it off.”
Altman pointed out that the curve in AI is going to be much steeper. “Systems in the near future will be dramatically different. None of the current systems matters. We are on an exponential curve, really,” he said. “Chat GPT 3.5 is like the old grey-scale Nokia phone and the ‘iPhone 14’ of AI will be coming soon,” he added.