If given a chance to ask Sam Altman anything, what would it be? AGI risks? Its comparison to nuclear bombs? Misuse of data by OpenAI? Security threat? Privacy? Nah, how about ‘love’? Of the questions that were posed by industry experts, government officials and entrepreneurs in an ET interview with Sam Altman in Delhi, only a few of them made OpenAI CEO ponder, but rest of it was a missed opportunity of sorts. 

Wasted Opportunity? 

In his current agenda of World Tour where OpenAI is seeking to spread the word of ChatGPT as the company continues to expand and create its presence everywhere, the event was a chance to explore OpenAI and probe on questions surrounding the multiple announcements that were released by the company over the last few weeks. However, the majority of the questions were strewn on generic AI information, such as risks of AI, OpenAI company culture and creativity- where ChatGPT couldn’t fit in. 

Some of the questions were so poorly framed that one might wonder why even bother. Cred Founder Kunal Shah’s question on what Sam learned about humans after ‘doing’ AI, was not only ridiculous but the answer it garnered was a meandering explanation of how Sam thinks “something strange” and “very important” is going on with humans which he hopes to preserve. There was another ill-fitting question by Prasoon Joshi on ‘creativity’ and how an individual can lose creative satisfaction with these systems, which again had nothing to do with OpenAI or Sam Altman. 

Source: Youtube 

Déjà Vu

Probably ringing bells were the responses of Sam Altman at various points which were all too familiar with the AI Senate hearing that happened a few weeks ago. It was either the questions that steered him to respond in a similar manner, or that the answers were too familiar. Claims of him not having equity, wanting regulations to build and deploy responsible AGI, and the very famous “future systems can cure all diseases or help us address climate change” was like a well scripted deal. 

With announcing 1 million grant offers each for democratising AI and forming cybersecurity programs, the company is now inclining towards being a responsible company and is working for the people and is caring about the world by deflecting any AGI risk. 

On the question of what next for OpenAI , Sam was pretty nonchalant in responding with the same saga of how the model will get smarter, multimodal with reduced hallucinations, something the company is already claiming with their last update on process supervision training.  

A Few Bouncers

While not all went the dud way, there were a few questions that touched upon the pressing issues of AI regulations and evaluation of AGI. Srivatsa Krishna, IAS, asked about the company’s strategic move to ask the government for regulation knowing how hard it is to bring collective action among nations. The question was obviously the one that crossed all our minds when Sam first mentioned about wanting an AI regulation in the Congress hearing. The response was sort of sour with Sam calling the question a ‘cynical take’ on things and defending the ‘existential risk’ as a need, and said that if governments are not able to act together, then it will be left to companies to cooperate. 

A topic on AGI on determining the proximity to it was something Srikant from Fractal brought up. He asked about the tests to know how close we are getting to AGI?’ To which Altman replied that GPT-4 ‘is not close to AGI’ and some of the evaluation parameters will be around the ability of the model to figure things on its own and to discover and learn to solve problems that it’s never seen before. While Altman believes they are nowhere close to AGI, one of the first few things he said at the start of the interview was that “OpenAI is all about the quest for AGI.” 

When the tech experts watching would have probably wished for questions that would have nudged on the obscure side of OpenAI, nothing would top the bizarre one posed by a relentless VC’s obsession on the possibility of forming a relationship with a robot- “With AI, can you remove what you find irksome about your lover and program a robot in order to get the perfect lover?” Altman was not only baffled, he sheepishly responded, “I hope we don’t fall in love with robots – that will be deeply depressing!”

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