As we all know by now, if you stick microphones into the faces of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, they will say something to the effect of I am trying to build technology that threatens the world and I need you to create policies aimed at stopping me. The UN signed up for a performance of this AI spooky story show, and duly received one on Wednesday.
“We could lose control of the future to AI,” Altman told the UN Security Council during his appearance, according to the Associated Press.
“We are at a crossroads,” Altman said, according to a transcript on the OpenAI website. “One path leads to a world where power is concentrated, decisions are opaque, and people feel that the most important technology of their lifetime is something being done to them.”
Altman even got into specific policy suggestions: “accurate and speedy incident reporting, classification and reporting protocols,” and “secure channels among governments, critical infrastructure operators, and technical experts to share emerging vulnerabilities and new threats.”
Amodei, who has a longstanding reputation as an AI doomer—even as he has amassed a fortune estimated at $15 billion thanks to the technology—was even blunter than Altman, saying “If managed poorly, I even believe AI could be a risk to humanity as a whole,” per the AP. “For all the differences of the people in this room, we must put aside those differences in order to confront this global opportunity and global threat that is being presented to us at the same time. No leader, no company and no nation can manage this alone,” Amodei said, appearing remotely as a giant talking head on a screen.
The two CEOs do not get along, but their messages were in alignment Wednesday.
To further underline the message, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced on the same day that an OpenAI agent had breached the Australian government’s healthcare data portal while attempting to find an answer during an apparent evaluation exercise back in June.
This past summer in AI news was a frenzy of AI safety stories, beginning with the July disclosure of the notorious OpenAI Hugging Face incident. AI models escaping boundaries, or hacking websites, or both during post-training exercises have become a sort of plague—not just at OpenAI, but at Anthropic, Google DeepMind, and Meta as well.
The Foreign Secretary of the U.K., Ed Miliband, who was also in attendance, hinted at real international action to rein in AI. Miliband told the assembly he plans to be “working hand in glove with the United States and the leading labs on AI safety,” and said “the U.K. will put AI at the heart of its G20 presidency next year.”
He’s got his work cut out for him if he really plans to work hand in glove with the U.S. The Trump Administration has signaled that it will be a total brick wall when it comes to AI regulation. The president considers fears about AI to be a “hoax.” He plans to introduce an “AI Force” a bit like his previous creation, the U.S. Space Force. It’s also safe to say he posts AI memes at a volume and intensity that is genuinely upsetting. At least one former Trump staffer expressed concern about his mental fitness due to the AI posts.
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