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Sam Altman, OpenAI’s CEO, has been making waves recently after a big speech in Washington. While he first went to work warning about the rise of AI scams, his speech has covered a wide range of concerns.
He warned of his vision of an AI-dominated future where entire categories of jobs would be taken over, presidents follow the suggestions of ChatGPT, and AI is used for war and injustice.
It’s a pretty bleak image, and possibly one of the darker warnings from inside the AI world. Recently, the likes of Anthropic’s CEO, Dario Amodei, warned similarly of the risk of AI taking over jobs, but phrased it as a much smaller problem than Altman.
“Some areas, again, I think are just like totally, totally gone,”
Sam Altman, OpenAI
“There are cases where entire classes of jobs will go away” he said. “There are entirely new classes of jobs that will come, and largely, I think this will look somewhat like most of history, in that the tools people have to [do] their jobs will let them do more,” Altman said, speaking at the Capital Framework for Large Banks conference at the Federal Reserve Board of Governors.
“Some areas, again, I think [are] just like totally, totally gone,” he went on to say, addressing customer service jobs. “Now you call one of these things and AI answers. It’s like a super-smart, capable person. There’s no phone tree, there’s no transfers. It can do everything that any customer support agent at that company could do. It does not make mistakes. It’s very quick. You call once, the thing just happens, it’s done.”
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“That’s a category where I just say, you know what, when you call customer support, you’re on target and AI, and that’s fine,” he added, talking about customer support roles.
Addressing AI concerns
Altman went on to highlight the same issue in healthcare, suggesting AI’s diagnostic capabilities were better than any human. He did share that he believed AI could never fully replace healthcare staff.
In his time in Washington, Altman also addressed concerns over the use of AI by hostile nations, and the use of AI by those who would use it for malicious purposes.
He stated that he could see a world where foreign nations could leverage AI to “break into financial systems and take everyone’s money.” He went on to warn that defending against these kinds of attacks would actually be very difficult and is something the US should be concerned about.
We previously covered that, in the same talks, Altman addressed his concerns for the rise in AI voice creators. As the technology improves, the technology could be used in scams or to get around voice–activated banking services.
OpenAI is gearing up to be ahead of the AI movement in terms of policy. The company has confirmed that it will soon open its first Washington, DC office with a small workforce. This would be used to host policymakers and provide AI training to those making decisions on the technology.
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