On With Kara Swisher: Sam Altman

OpenAI's co-founder has become the public face of the AI revolution, alternately evangelical and circumspect about the force he has helped unleash on the world. Following the unveiling of OpenAI's GPT-4, Altman spoke with Swisher about what makes him "super-nervous."

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KARA SWISHER: In almost every interview you do, you're asked about the dangers of releasing Al products and you say it's better to test it gradually, when the stakes are relatively low. Can you expand on that? Why aren't the stakes high right now?

SAM ALTMAN: Relatively is the key word.

KS: Right. What happens to the stakes if it's not controlled now?

SA: Well, these systems are now much more powerful than they were a few years ago, and we are much more cautious than we were a few years ago in terms of how we deploy them. We've tried to learn what we can learn. We've made some improvements, and we've found ways that people want to use this. In this interview (and I totally get why), I think we're mostly talking about all of the downsides, but

KS: No, I'm going to ask you about the upsides.

SA: But we've also found ways to improve the upsides by learning, too. So mitigate downsides, maximize upsides. That sounds good. And it's not that the stakes are that low anymore. In fact, I think we're in a different world than we were a few years ago. I still think they're relatively low to where we'll be a few years from now. These systems still have classes of problems, but there are things that are totally out of reach that we know they'll be capable of. And the learnings we have now, the feedback we get now, seeing the ways people hack, jailbreak, whatever-that's super-valuable. I'm curious how you think we're doing.

KS: I think you're saying the right things.