Sam Altman’s Second Coming Sparks New Fears of the AI Apocalypse
WiredNov 27, 2023
House Speaker Johnson Meets With OpenAI CEO Altman
Image copyright: Kent Nishimura/Getty Images News via Getty Images
The Facts
US House Speaker Mike Johnson met with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman on Thursday to discuss how the government can regulate artificial intelligence (AI), with Johnson saying they "agree" that "There’s unlimited potential [in] AI" as well as that "there are some dangers."
Altman, whose recent removal from and subsequent reinstatement as CEO of the ChatGPT maker has led to calls for solid frameworks in the industry, also agreed with Johnson in calling for balancing "AI's tremendous upside with mitigating its risks."
The Spin
Pro-establishment narrative
AI companies must cooperate with regulators to ensure this novel technology is built and used appropriately. These warnings are not just coming from concerned citizens and lawmakers but also the industry's leading executives, from the leaders of OpenAI, Microsoft, and Google to Elon Musk. These companies already have the brains and the capital to develop world-changing AI — they just need help implementing guardrails at the government level.
Establishment-critical narrative
We should be careful before including the CEOs of these companies, whose obvious goal is to monopolize the power and profit of AI, in discussions on how to regulate them. The so-called nonprofit OpenAI is suspiciously profitable, on top of the fact that it's basically become a subsidiary of Microsoft and put industry titans and former government officials on its board. If European governments — located far from the tech capital of Silicon Valley — are only requiring vague "regulate yourself policies," what can we expect from the US government, whose ties to Big Tech are much closer?
Narrative C
AI is the future, and trying to set back its development won't solve any problems. AI offers a revolutionary means to address some of the world's biggest challenges, including inequity and even climate change, and it must be kept on its current track. Rather than trying to reign it in, the tricky areas of the technology simply need to be identified, and work can be done to improve them while AI continues to develop at its current pace.