OpenAI postpones its stock market launch due to the dangers of AI
Sam Altman considers that the doubts about the safety of the technology make it not the right time
BarcelonaOpenAI CEO Sam Altman announced this Sunday that the technology company will not go public this year due to the security risks posed by advanced artificial intelligence models. "Given everything that is happening in terms of safety, now would be an unwise time to go public. We don't feel any pressure to do so," Altman explained in an interview with the magazine Fortune.
Altman emphasized that the technology company still has "a lot of work to do on safety and alignment" and insisted that it is prepared to make decisions "contrary to immediate financial gain" for its investors to "ensure" human control over the technology.
The OpenAI CEO also acknowledged that the company has been slowing down some training processes and has described as "unacceptable" any scenario in which there is a 10% probability of a catastrophe due to a lack of control over artificial intelligence software. "We all have a great responsibility and we cannot allow egos, financial incentives or other factors to get in the way," Altman pointed out.
"The industry lied"
Furthermore, in another interview, the founder and CEO of Anthropic, Dario Amodei, stated that the industry lied about the danger of AI. "I won't lie to you: there are real dangers. And I think that for too long the industry has lied to people. We [at Anthropic] have never done so, but a large part of the industry has," declared Amodei on CBS. The Anthropic leader has also acknowledged that he feels "uncomfortable" with the fact that it is a private company and not a democratically elected government that is in charge of such a powerful tool, and he has called for a "combination of democratic governments" to exercise "joint governance" and monitoring of AI companies.
"If we build AI the right way, I think the probability of something bad happening is very low. If we build it the wrong way, the probability of something bad happening is very high," he pointed out. However, despite the words of Altman and Amodei, US President Donald Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson considered this Sunday that AI development must continue to prevent China from taking the lead.