- Sam Altman is worried about people’s over-reliance on ChatGPT
- The OpenAI CEO says, “Something about collectively deciding we’re going to live our lives the way AI tells us feels bad and dangerous.”
- ChatGPT receives over 2.5 billion prompts a day, making OpenAI one of the most popular platforms on the planet
OpenAI CEO, Sam Altman, says people have an “over-reliance” on ChatGPT and it’s worrying for future generations.
Speaking at a Federal Reserve banking event, Altman said, “People rely on ChatGPT too much. There’s young people who say things like, ‘I can’t make any decision in my life without telling ChatGPT everything that’s going on. It knows me, it knows my friends. I’m gonna do whatever it says.’ That feels really bad to me.”
This comes after new data has found ChatGPT receives over 2.5 billion prompts a day from more than 500 million weekly active users.
Altman’s comments highlight the unknown about AI and its rapid growth, with those pioneering in the space unsure about the detriment it might cause.
Last month, following the major ChatGPT outage, I wrote about how AI is “genuinely helping millions of people get through life,” and while that seems to be the case, there’s also a worrying number of people who use the technology so much that they can’t cope with life without it.
During that 10-hour outage, I received emails from ChatGPT users who hadn’t written emails in months without the help of AI, used the technology to help with their online dating, and even a user who told me they needed ChatGPT to help them get to sleep.
Now, Altman wants to emphasize his concern surrounding the wider population’s use of AI. “Something about collectively deciding we’re going to live our lives the way AI tells us feels bad and dangerous,” he says.
Sam, you can’t have your cake and eat it
In this rapidly evolving industry, we’re seeing a rate of innovation that I don’t think I’ve ever experienced in my 30 years on this planet. Almost daily, new AI software breaks through glass ceilings, performing exponentially better than previous versions.
OpenAI’s innovation in the space has been a major driving force in Altman’s estimated $1.8 billion net worth, but now he’s starting to get concerned by people using it?
The AI space is largely unregulated, from copyrighted AI image generation tools to chatbots like Grok hallucinating in some of the worst ways possible (I won’t get into that here).
That said, the rate at which companies like OpenAI are releasing products means they are providing powerful tools to users without truly knowing how they’ll have an impact on people’s lives.
I agree with Altman in the sense that we’re becoming over-reliant on AI and ChatGPT in particular, but does a tech billionaire who’s profited from this over-reliance have the right to now say they are fearful? I don’t think so.