OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman has called for greater public trust in his company and other artificial intelligence (AI) developers to act responsibly, as concerns grow over the potential risks posed by rapidly advancing technology.
“The world should trust that we are going to do the right thing because it’s the right thing and we feel the magnitude of this,” Altman said on Tuesday at a conference in San Francisco, reports BBC.
At the same time, Altman acknowledged that people had valid reasons to fear AI as the capabilities of the technology continue to advance at a rapid pace.
“It doesn’t take as much imagination as it used to for [us] to imagine how this could go wrong,” he said. “I think the world is right to be afraid of this.”
Altman made the remarks while appearing at an annual conference organised by software company Salesforce.
His appearance came after a post by a former researcher at AI firm Anthropic went viral last week. The researcher, who had left the company, claimed that AI could potentially wipe out humanity by the end of the decade if it remained unchecked.
Several other AI executives and experts said they agreed with the assessment, although they did not explain how they reached their conclusions or how AI could cause such an outcome.
The claims have intensified scrutiny of AI development in recent days. Anthropic chief executive Dario Amodei responded by calling for the pace of AI development to be reduced and urging governments to regulate the industry.
Altman, Google DeepMind co-founder Demis Hassabis and Elon Musk, owner of social media platform X and AI assistant Grok, applauded Amodei’s post.
By Tuesday, however, more AI industry leaders were arguing in favour of self-regulation rather than greater government involvement.
Altman said he believed AI companies such as OpenAI had the ability to regulate themselves.
“We will get it right, I’m very confident in our company’s and industry’s ability to do this safely,” Altman said, adding that he was sure they would “keep alignment and safety way ahead of capabilities” and, if they could not, they would “slow down or stop”.
Following Altman’s remarks, Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg wrote on X that every AI laboratory had the ability and incentive “to take its own actions” to develop safer AI tools and models.
“Any lab that doesn’t focus on alignment will fall behind,” Zuckerberg wrote. “Labs face significant liability if their models cause harm, so they have a strong incentive to prevent this as well.”
Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang also backed the view that AI companies should decide whether to release new versions of the technology, rather than having such decisions imposed by outside authorities.
Speaking at the same conference on Tuesday, Huang said: “We don’t need new laws or regulations,” adding that there should not be a “false choice” between the pace of innovation and AI safety.
Nvidia is the world’s largest company by valuation, with its profits surging on strong demand for the computing chips it produces for AI applications.
“Safety is paramount. However, safety is an engineering problem,” Huang said.
He said AI company leaders should refrain from releasing a product if they ever lose confidence in its safety.
“That’s a very obvious thing to do,” Huang said. “Run as fast as you can, but if at any time you feel the institution is not in control, take a pause.”
Some industry figures, meanwhile, have argued that renewed fears over AI have been exaggerated and are being used to generate further hype around the technology.
During the conference, Altman urged hundreds of business executives attending the event to use AI tools to support their work. He also warned that businesses need to adopt the technology to help defend themselves against potentially AI-enabled cyber attacks.
The proposal that AI companies should regulate themselves entirely has drawn criticism from some within the industry.
Jack Clark, an Anthropic executive and co-founder, told the BBC on Monday that allowing AI to remain a “totally unregulated industry” amounted to “rolling dice with immense risks”.
Patrick Hillman, chief operating officer of Logical Intelligence, which is chaired by AI pioneer Yann LeCun, also highlighted the limited public trust in technology companies when it comes to acting in the broader public interest.
“The only institution that Americans might trust less than Washington these days is Silicon Valley. I have worked and lived in both and I assure you both have earned this scepticism,” Hillman said.
“If you believe what you are building is dangerous, show us what you are prepared to stop doing,” he added.
OpenAI and Anthropic executives have said they have recently begun working towards an industry-wide agreement on AI safety.
Amodei, who made a brief appearance at Tuesday’s conference, said Anthropic was now “in a dialogue with the rest of the industry” over commitments to stronger safety standards and checks for AI tools and development.
He said one of the biggest surprises of the AI boom had been not only the rapid progress of the technology but also its wider impact.
“We didn’t appreciate that it would lead to companies growing so fast, and how quickly they would become central to things,” Amodei said.
OpenAI executive Chris Lehane said last week that the company was also working with other AI laboratories “to advance frontier AI standards, building a voluntary effort now, with or without government support.” The effort includes Anthropic and Google DeepMind.
“With stakes this high, we cannot let the perfect become the enemy of the good,” Lehane wrote.
