Your ChatGPT experience may change as a result
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman shared in a post on X this week that the company is teaming up with the U.S. AI Safety Institute and will give the government agency early access to its next major AI model for safety testing.
Altman described the plan as part of a larger new push for AI safety measures, which could significantly impact ChatGPT and other OpenAI products in the years ahead. It also might be part of a PR and policy push against critics who say OpenAI no longer prioritizes AI safety.
One big reason for the criticism is that OpenAI created and then largely dissolved an internal AI safety team. The disbanding led to the resignation of top executives at the company, like Jan Leike and Ilya Sutskever, both of whom were instrumental in the company’s early safety research efforts. Many other current and former employees publicly wondered if OpenAI had decided to ignore safety in favor of product development.
Another reason is highlighted in a note appended directly to Altman’s post. He mentions pledging to allocate 20% of its computing resources to safety research last year, but that allocation at the time was specifically for the same committee whose leaders left the company. Still, the deal with the government isn’t the only genuine change.
