OpenAI CEO Sam Altman spoke candidly in a new interview about his concerns about AI with podcaster Laurie Segall, saying he hopes she hasn’t let her son use such technology yet.
Altman appeared on Thursday’s episode of “Mostly Human,” where Segall asked him about his concerns about parenting amid the rapidly developing technology, saying it is “probably the most high-stakes thing” she could think of.
“We’re both raising young boys,” she said. “And I think I said this to you before, like we’re both raising young boys, but in a sense you’re raising my son, too. Like the technology that you build will be integrated into every facet of my son Charlie’s life.”
“I hope you don’t let him use it yet,” said Altman, who has a young son born last year via surrogacy.
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“I am absolutely not letting him use it,” she said. “When are you letting your son use it?”
“Not for a while,” Altman said, elaborating that people ask him frequently, now a father who plans to have more children in his family, “’Do you feel more responsibility about how you don’t destroy the world with AI?'”
He went on to say, “My highest order bit is to not destroy the world with AI, like it doesn’t matter how good everything else is if we do that.”
OpenAI launched the generative AI chatbot ChatGPT, which has been hugely influential in the AI boom that’s marked this decade. Its popularity, ubiquity, and questions about its dependability have led to debates about the ethics and potential pitfalls of its usage.
Altman added he has frequently thought about the future world his kids will grow up in, to the degree he used to write letters every night so that his very young children would be able to read what he was thinking about when they are older and more able to appreciate his thoughts. He was eventually told by his lawyers to stop this practice, he added.
Altman noted that it’s actually another aspect of technology that has given him pause as a parent.
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“A thing that has changed hugely is how I feel about algorithmic feeds and iPads in small children’s hands and stuff like that, and when I watch kids just a little bit older than mine that you cannot take the iPad away from,” he said, noting that is a concern he feels “very strongly about.”
While he said he loves the fact his son will “grow up in a world where computers are smarter than him and do anything he wants,” nonetheless, “I want him to, like, play in the dirt for now.”
