(April 6): OpenAI has released a set of policy recommendations meant to help navigate an era of artificial intelligence-fuelled upheaval — including suggesting the creation of a public wealth fund, fast-response social safety net programmes and speedier electrical grid development.
In a document released Monday titled Industrial Policy for the Intelligence Age: Ideas to Keep People First, OpenAI proposed a range of policies related to AI “superintelligence” — often referred to as software that can outperform humans at all kinds of tasks but which does not currently exist.
Many of the proposals are tied to social change driven by AI, which some fear could lead to widespread job losses. The company advocates for a public wealth fund that will distribute cash to citizens, giving them “a stake in AI-driven economic growth.” It proposes finding a way to let people share in efficiency gains driven by AI — including by incentivising employers to experiment with four-day work weeks, as long as workers’ output doesn’t fall. And it suggests actively measuring how AI affects wages and unemployment — and then, once “these metrics exceed pre-defined thresholds", offering workers increased social assistance like unemployment benefits or job training.
The goal of the proposals, the company wrote, is to serve as a “starting point” for a wider discussion “to ensure that AI benefits everyone". In an interview, OpenAI’s chief global affairs officer Chris Lehane said the policy conversations around AI need to be “as transformative” as the technology itself.
Founded in 2015, OpenAI kicked off the current boom in generative AI in late 2022 with the release of ChatGPT, which remains its most well-known product. Originally built as a nonprofit dedicated to advancing AI to benefit humanity, the startup has since restructured into a more traditional for-profit company.
OpenAI has said for years that it’s working to build what’s often referred to as artificial general intelligence, or AGI — essentially, computers that can do most tasks as well as people. More recently, the company and some of its rivals have discussed plans for more powerful software, or superintelligence. In its latest document, OpenAI defined superintelligence as “AI systems capable of outperforming the smartest humans even when they are assisted by AI.”
See also: Microsoft charts US$10 bil of outlays in AI-eager Japan
While OpenAI’s ChatGPT is used by more than 900 million people globally each week, many in the US have negative feelings about AI generally, driven in large part by concerns about job displacement as well as power-hungry data centres.
Companies like OpenAI and Anthropic, which are at the forefront of AI advancement, have sought to educate the public and policymakers about the potential changes wrought by AI. That’s included a range of work on communication, including last week, when OpenAI bought the tech talk show TBPN.
“It is simply not good enough to wave your hands and say, ‘Here’s all the things that are going to happen and then not actually come up with solutions,’” Lehane said.
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