Boss of AI firm’s ‘worst fears’ are more worrying than creepy Senate party trick

Normally when representatives of tech companies appear before the US Senate, they tend to rail against the prospect of regulation, and resist the suggestion that their technology is doing harm. And that’s what made this committee hearing on AI a rare thing. Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI – the company that created ChatGPT and GPT4, one of the world’s largest and most powerful language AIs – admitted on Tuesday: “My worst fears are that we… the industry… cause significant harm to the world.” He went on to say that “regulatory intervention by government will be critical to mitigate the risks…