Sam Altman Opening Statement to Congress on AI Regulation

Key Takeaways

thank you thank you chairman Blumenthal ranking member Holly members of the Judiciary Committee thank you for the opportunity to speak to you today about large neural networks it's it's really an honor to be here uh even more so in the moment than I expected my name is Sam Altman I'm the Chief Executive Officer of open AI openai was founded on the belief that artificial intelligence has the potential to improve nearly every aspect of Our Lives but also that it creates serious risks we have to work together to manage we're here because people love this technology we think it can be a printing press moment we have to work together to make it so open AI is an unusual company and we set it up that way because AI is an unusual technology we are governed by a non-profit and our activities are driven by our mission and our Charter which commit us to working to ensure that the broad distribution of the benefits of AI and to maximizing the safety of AI systems we are working to build tools that one day can help us make new discoveries and address some of Humanity's biggest challenges like climate change and curing cancer our current systems aren't yet capable of doing these things but it has been immensely gratifying to watch many people around the world get so much value from what these systems can already do today we love seeing people use our tools to create to learn to be more productive we're very optimistic that they're going to be fantastic jobs in the future and the current jobs can get much better we also love seeing what developers are doing to improve lives for example be my eyes used our new multimodal technology in gpt4 to help visually impaired individuals navigate their environment we believe that the benefits of the tools we have deployed so far vastly outweigh the risks but ensuring their safety is vital to our work and we make significant efforts to ensure that safety is built into our systems at all levels before releasing any new system openai conducts extensive testing engages external experts for detailed reviews and independent audits improves the model's Behavior and implements robust safety and monitoring systems before we release gpt4 our latest model we spent over six months conducting extensive evaluations external red teaming and dangerous capability testing we are proud of the progress that we made gpt4 is more likely to respond helpfully and truthfully and refuse harmful requests than any other widely deployed model of similar capability however we think that regulatory intervention by governments will be critical to mitigate the risks of increasingly powerful models for example the US government might consider a combination of Licensing and testing requirements for development and release of AR models above a threshold of capabilities there are several other areas I mentioned in my written testimony where I believe that companies like ours can partner with governments including ensuring that the most powerful AI models adhere to a set of safety requirements facilitating processes to develop and update safety measures and examining opportunities for Global coordination and as you mentioned I think it's important that companies have their own responsibility here no matter what Congress does this is a remarkable time to be working on artificial intelligence but as this technology advances we understand that people are anxious about how it could change the way we live we are too but we believe that we can and must work together to identify and manage the potential downsides so that we can all enjoy the tremendous upsides it is essential that powerful AI is developed with democratic values in mind and this means that U.S leadership is critical I believe that we will be able to mitigate the risks in front of us and really capitalize on this Technology's potential to grow the US economy and the worlds and I look forward to working with you all to meet this moment and I look forward to answering your questions thank you