After a tumultuous period last month where he was sacked and then rehired by OpenAI within a week, generative AI poster boy Sam Altman made his first public appearance at the annual meeting of the Hope Global Forums to talk about the future of artificial intelligence and the security risks it poses.
Speaking about the new possibilities generated by ChatGPT in an interaction with Operation Hope, Altman said, "I hope that every kid born today will be smarter and more educated than any of this in this room and I think you can see the glimpses of that with the way students are learning with ChatGPT… What this means to put this in everybody's pocket, where everybody gets this super helpful assistant that can do anything they need. It's a different world for sure but I think a much better world in many many ways."
Altman in response to a question by the host John Hope Bryant noted that ChatGPT isn't a 'genius yet but it will be. I mean in a few more years, it will be". Altman's statement could be a reference to the possibility of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), which the 38-year-old and OpenAI have frequently referenced in the past. Put simply, AGI is a state in which the capabilities of an AI system match or exceed those of humans.
Will ChatGPT take away millions of jobs?
In response to another question about whether ChatGPT will make tens of millions of jobs obsolete, Altman said: "That may happen, and I think it's worth being honest about"
The OpenAI CEO said, “I think it will happen differently than we think. I was very afraid for a while that AI will start doing every job… In many cases, this is something that will just change the way people do their jobs in the same way that mobile phones did, the internet before that, the computers before that. We adapt and we find new and better ways to work”
“That is the role of progress, like that's been going on for a super long time. With one technology revolution after another. Now you are supposed to say that this one is different but it does feel to me that this time it is different and it's a little scary for sure” Altman added
