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Smart AI and Society - Sam Altman (OpenAI)

Name: Smart AI and Society - Sam Altman (OpenAI)
Uploaded: 2024-05-01T14:57:10+00:00
Duration: 2 min 48 s
Channel: GHION.AI
Description: In this monologue, Sam Altman reflects on the natural fear of creating intelligence that surpasses any human, arguing that such fear is a reasonable sign…

1 May 2024 · 3 min

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2:48

In this monologue, Sam Altman reflects on the natural fear of creating intelligence that surpasses any human, arguing that such fear is a reasonable sign of the profound change involved. He frames human progress not as the product of individual brains but as the cumulative scaffolding of societal infrastructure—knowledge, the internet, smartphones, and shared tools—that collectively functions like an artificial general intelligence. This collective intelligence enables each generation to be dramatically more capable than its ancestors. Altman posits that future AI systems will become new layers of this scaffolding, providing tools that empower individuals to achieve feats previously unimaginable. He envisions AI accelerating scientific discovery, adding to the shared knowledge base, and thereby amplifying the capabilities of future generations. While acknowledging the unsettling aspect of superhuman AI, he emphasizes that the overall impact is likely to be overwhelmingly positive, with AI helping humanity solve more problems and expand the frontier of what individuals can accomplish.

Chapters

I wanted to ask if the prospect of making something smarter than any human could possibly be scares you. It of course does. And I think it would be like, really weird and a bad sign if it didn't scare me. Humans have gotten dramatically smarter and more capable over time. You are dramatically more capable than your great great grandparents, and there's almost no biological drift over that period. Like, sure, you eat a little bit better and you got better health care, maybe you eat worse, I don't know. But that's not the main reason. You're more capable. You are more capable because the infrastructure of society is way smarter and way more capable than any human. And through that, it made you society. People that came before you made you the Internet, the iPhone, a huge amount of knowledge available at your fingertips. And you can do things that your predecessors would find absolutely breathtaking. Society is far smarter than you now. Society is an AGI, as far as you can tell. And the way that that happened was not any individual's brain, but the space between all of us. That scaffolding that we build up and contribute to brick by brick, step by step, and then we use to go to far greater heights for the people that come after us. Things that are smarter than us will contribute to that same scaffolding. You will have, your children will have tools available that you didn't, and that scaffolding will have gotten built up to greater heights. And that's always a little bit scary, but I think it's way more good than bad. And people will do better things and solve more problems, and the people of the future will be able to use these new tools and the new scaffolding that these new tools contribute to. If you think about a world that has AI making a bunch of scientific discovery, what happens to that scientific progress is it just gets added to the scaffolding, and then your kids can do new things with it, or you in 10 years can do new things with it. But the way it's going to feel to people, I think, is not that there is this much smarter entity, because we're much smarter in some sense than the great, great, great grandparents are more capable at least, but that any individual person can just do more.