OpenAI CEO Sam Altman shares his outlook in MIT interview

Recent trends show how artificial intelligence is rapidly changing users’ lives worldwide. Consequently, many wonder what it means for the future of education, work, and humanity. 

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman addressed these concerns during an interview with Massachusetts Institute of Technology President Sally Kornbluth on May 2, 2024.

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Learn more about the future with artificial intelligence by reading statements from the man who sparked it all.

What did the OpenAI CEO say?

The MIT president started by acknowledging the public anticipation of AI trends.

“I think most of us remember the first time we saw ChatGPT and were like, ‘Oh my god, that is so cool!’

“Now, we’re trying to figure out what the next generation of all this is going to be,” she said. 

“I think it’s awesome that for two weeks, everybody was freaking out about ChatGPT-4, and then by the third week, everyone was like, ‘Come on, where’s GPT-5?’” Altman replied.

“I think that says something legitimately great about human expectation and striving and why we all have to [be working to] make things better,” he added.

Then, Kornbluth asked about the ethical issues with artificial intelligence. 

“I think we’ve made surprisingly good progress around how to align a system around a set of values,” the OpenAI CEO stated. 

“As much as people like to say ‘You can’t use these things because they’re spewing toxic waste all the time,’ GPT-4 behaves kind of the way you want it to, and we’re able to get it to follow a given set of values, not perfectly well, but better than I expected by this point,” he said.

The MIT president then asked how AI might cause many to lose their jobs. In response, Altman admitted, “This is going to eliminate a lot of current jobs, and this is going to change the way that a lot of current jobs function, and this is going to create entirely new jobs.”

How should future generations prepare for AI?

Furthermore, Kornbluth asked the tech pioneer for advice for students thinking about their careers, and he responded:

“The most important lesson to learn early on in your career is that you can kind of figure anything out, and no one has all of the answers when they start out.

“You just sort of stumble your way through, have a fast iteration speed, and try to drift toward the most interesting problems to you, and be around the most impressive people and have this trust that you’ll successfully iterate to the right thing. … You can do more than you think, faster than you think.

“The way we are teaching our young people that the world is totally screwed and that it’s hopeless to try to solve problems, that all we can do is sit in our bedrooms in the dark and think about how awful we are, is a really deeply unproductive streak.

“You all need to make it part of your life mission to fight against this. Prosperity, abundance, a better life next year, a better life for our children. That is the only path forward,” Altman said.