Sam Altman talks with the White House on the speed of A.I. advancements
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What prompted Sam Altman’s meeting with the White House on AI safety?
Time for our daily tech and business report. Open AI CEO Sam Altman connecting with White House officials to talk about pumping the brakes on the pace of artificial intelligence development. For more, we turn to the KCBS Ring Central Newsline and speak with Bloomberg's Maggie Eastland. Maggie, thanks for the time.
Yeah, thanks for having me.
So does this have anything to do with the open AI hacking last week?
It absolutely does. So OpenAI's chief executive officer was on the Hill this morning. And, you know, he was asked if they've had conversations with the White House about potentially slowing down artificial development actually in response to that hack. So in that scenario, the AI models actually kind of broke out of their sandbox, which is supposed to be a safe testing environment.
How did the recent OpenAI hack influence calls to slow AI development?
And they access the Internet and hacked Hugging Face as well as another firm we just found out recently. So this is absolutely a response to that hack.
Now, there was a petition that was circulating earlier this week from staffers that said, hey, maybe we ought to slow down. And apparently Sam Altman says, yeah, I agree with that.
Absolutely. Yeah, that's what he he told reporters today on the Hill. And it's definitely surprising from him because we have not seen open AI support efforts to slow the frontier development before. And we're now seeing them actually confirm that they're not only supporting it, but talking with the White House about it.
What does it mean to slow that slow down development?
I don't think we know yet.
What does “slowing down” AI development actually entail for OpenAI and regulators?
And actually, Sam Altman has said on a podcast that it's going to be important to get this right. And there are a lot of factors and there's concerns that this could be seen as the AI companies colluding and he's trying to avoid that. So it's still very early stages. And as you know, in Congress, it's been quite hard to advance legislation. So that's going to be a real challenge as well.
Sometimes we don't know how to get it right until we get it wrong.
Yeah, I think that's very much the case. I think AI is also moving very quickly, as a lot of lawmakers and CEOs have said recently. So it's been very difficult. And many people in Washington have said that policymakers and Trump administration officials are kind of building the plane as they're flying it on their regulatory policy here just because the AI capabilities are advancing so quickly.
How is Washington responding to AI leaders’ request for a pause on advanced models?
What does Washington do now with the notion that some of the top AI developers are saying, okay, let's take a pause?
It's certainly going to be a challenge, especially for this administration. President Trump has been quite vocal about the importance of going full steam ahead on AI in order to make sure that the U.S. remains ahead of China in this geopolitical tech race. So the president has repeatedly signaled that. But what's happening is policymakers are running into real hurdles when they're presented with advances in the technology that are actually quite concerning. And we saw over the course of the last few months, sort of the same situation happened for cyber attacks. So, you know, the White House was historically not wanting to have much regulation, but eventually they did impose a pre-release model evaluation framework specifically for cyber risks.
So we are really seeing a shift and it's been, you know, difficult even for members of the Trump administration to decide sort of who's in charge of this policy.
What are the next steps and challenges for AI policy after the White House discussion?
Yeah, it is like you said. We're still kind of working on it as we go along. Maggie, thanks so much for the time and for the reporting. That is Bloomberg's Maggie Eastland. You can hear our tech and business report weekdays at 1230 on KCBS. And for more, catch Bloomberg Technology. That's weekdays at 8 a.m.
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
What prompted Sam Altman’s meeting with the White House on AI safety?
0:00–0:54
2
How did the recent OpenAI hack influence calls to slow AI development?
0:54–1:36
3
What does “slowing down” AI development actually entail for OpenAI and regulators?
1:36–2:32
4
How is Washington responding to AI leaders’ request for a pause on advanced models?
2:32–3:40
5
What are the next steps and challenges for AI policy after the White House discussion?
3:40–3:58
Speakers
1 identifiedMore from KCBS Bloomberg Tech and Business Report
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