‘We are a little bit scared’: OpenAI CEO warns of risks of artificial intelligence

Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, the company that developed the controversial consumer-facing artificial intelligence application ChatGPT, has warned that the technology comes with real dangers as it reshapes society.

Altman, 37, stressed that regulators and society need to be involved with the technology to guard against potentially negative consequences for humanity. "We've got to be careful here," Altman told ABC News on Thursday, adding: "I think people should be happy that we are a little bit scared of this.

"I'm particularly worried that these models could be used for large-scale disinformation," Altman said. "Now that they're getting better at writing computer code, [they] could be used for offensive cyber-attacks."

But despite the dangers, he said, it could also be "the greatest technology humanity has yet developed".

The warning came as OpenAI released the latest version of its language AI model, GPT-4, less than four months since the original version was released and became the fastest-growing consumer application in history.

In the interview, the artificial intelligence engineer said that although the new version was "not perfect" it had scored 90% in the US on the bar exams and a near-perfect score on the high school SAT math test. It could also write computer code in most programming languages, he said.

Fears over consumer-facing artificial intelligence, and artificial intelligence in general, focus on humans being replaced by machines. But Altman pointed out that AI only works under direction, or input, from humans.