OpenAI has a message for Washington: the rules for advanced AI are being written right now, and you should be holding the pen.
In a blog post on Monday, the company appealed to the U.S. to spearhead international efforts to establish global technical norms for cutting-edge AI, including recursive self-improvement. That's the sci-fi-sounding scenario where an AI system gets good enough to improve itself, and then keeps getting better, faster than anyone can track.
OpenAI's CEO Sam Altman, along with other industry leaders, has advocated for a coordinated slowdown in the development of this powerful technology, cautioning that it could soon self-improve and become uncontrollable by humans.
OpenAI underscored the need for a mechanism to promote complementary national and international frontier standards, common measurements, and incident reporting protocols for better collective action.
“Leading now will determine whether the United States shapes the global AI framework or watches a fragmented, uneven, and conflict-ridden system take hold around it,” OpenAI said in the blog post.
OpenAI also brought attention to the idea of “pacing” AI development to ensure that alignment research and its deployment stay ahead of capabilities, thereby ensuring AI acts in line with human values.
