Cloud Hosting

Sam Altman, the CEO ofOpenAI, recently said that Chinashould play a key role in shaping the guardrails that are placed around the technology.

China has some of the best AI talent in the world, Altmansaid during a talk at theBeijing Academy of Artificial Intelligence (BAAI) last week. Solving alignment for advanced AI systems requires some of the best minds from around the worldand so I really hope that Chinese AI researchers will make great contributions here.

Altman is in a good position to opine on these issues. His company is behindChatGPT, the chatbot thats shown the world how rapidly AI capabilities are progressing. Such advances have led scientists and technologists to call for limits on the technology. In March, many expertssigned an open letter calling for a six-month pause on the development of AI algorithms more powerful than those behind ChatGPT. Last month, executives including Altman and Demis Hassabis, CEO of Google DeepMind, signed a statementwarning that AI might someday pose an existential risk comparable to nuclear war or pandemics.

Such statements, often signed by executives working on the very technology they are warning could kill us, can feel hollow. For some, they also miss the point. Many AI experts say it is more important to focus on the harms AI can already cause byamplifying societal biases and facilitating thespread of misinformation.

BAAI chair Zhang Hongjiang told me that AI researchers in China are also deeply concerned about new capabilities emerging in AI.I really think that [Altman] is doing humankind a service by making this tour, by talking to various governments and institutions, he said.

Zhang said that a number of Chinese scientists, including the director of the BAAI, had signed the letter calling for a pause in the development of more powerful AI systems, but he pointed out that the BAAI has long been focused onmore immediate AI risks. New developments in AI mean we will definitely have more efforts working on AI alignment,Zhang said. But he added that the issue is tricky because smarter models can actually make things safer.

Altman was not the only Western AI expert to attend the BAAI conference.

Excerpt from:
Good News! China and the US Are Talking About AI Dangers - WIRED