Oprah just had an AI special with Sam Altman and Bill Gates — here are the highlights
Oprah Winfrey hosted a special on AI. Guests included OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Marques Brownlee and FBI director Christopher Wray.
Late Thursday evening, Oprah Winfrey aired a special on AI, appropriately titled “AI and the Future of Us.” Guests included OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, tech influencer Marques Brownlee, and current FBI director Christopher Wray.
The dominant tone was one of skepticism — and wariness.
Oprah noted in prepared remarks that the AI genie is out of the bottle, for better or worse, and that humanity will have to learn to live with the consequences.
“AI is still beyond our control and to a great extent…our understanding,” she said. “But it is here, and we’re going to be living with technology that can be our ally as well as our rival … We are this planet’s most adaptable creatures. We will adapt again. But keep your eyes on what’s real. The stakes could not be higher.”
Sam Altman overpromises
Altman, Oprah’s first interview of the night, made the questionable case that today’s AI is learning concepts within the data it’s trained on.
“We are showing the system a thousand words in a sequence and asking it to predict what comes next,” he told Oprah. “The system learns to predict, and then in there, it learns the underlying concepts.”
Sam Altman overpromises
Altman, Oprah’s first interview of the night, made the questionable case that today’s AI is learning concepts within the data it’s trained on.
“We are showing the system a thousand words in a sequence and asking it to predict what comes next,” he told Oprah. “The system learns to predict, and then in there, it learns the underlying concepts.”
While Altman possibly overstated the capabilities of today’s AI systems, he underlined the importance of figuring out how to safety-test those same systems.
“One of the first things we need to do — and this is now happening — is to get the government to start figuring out how to do safety testing of these systems, like we do for aircraft or new medicines,” he said. “I personally, probably have a conversation with someone in the government every few days.”
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