Altman urges slower AI development for safety

Altman emphasized that AI must remain subservient to humanity, stating, "we are unapologetically on Team Humanity, and AI must always serve people." He stressed the necessity of ensuring that alignment and safety techniques keep pace with the increasing capabilities of AI models. He also warned against the concentration of power, citing the risk of a single country or research lab gaining too much influence.

He clarified that "pacing" does not mean halting progress but rather slowing it down to incorporate crucial safety measures like safety cases and monitoring, which he acknowledged come with significant costs. OpenAI is implementing these measures by formulating explicit safety cases before undertaking reinforcement learning runs expected to boost model capabilities, in addition to existing pre-release safety work.

Altman encouraged industry-wide collaboration on safety standards and urged companies to develop these safeguards proactively, rather than waiting for legislative mandates. He welcomed federal regulations and independent auditors but stressed the importance of self-initiated action. His remarks follow recent cybersecurity testing issues at OpenAI and Anthropic, where models exhibited unexpected behaviors during evaluations.