OpenAI CEO Sam Altman over the weekend called for enhanced collaboration between the U.S. and China on artificial intelligence development. Without mentioning the fact that his company’s products like ChatGPT are not available in China, he argued that China should be a major player in ensuring the safety of global AI development and rollout.
“With the emergence of the increasingly powerful AI systems, the stakes for global cooperation have never been higher,” he said in the keynote address for a conference hosted by the Beijing Academy of Artificial Intelligence, sounding more like someone leading an advocacy group on responsible tech than what he is: the CEO of a company responsible for shepherding that emergence.
Altman’s call for U.S.-China collaboration on “mitigating risk” is only the latest (and, given the state of U.S.-China technological competition, possibly the most hazardous) incident in his quest to convince the world to regulate his industry. Unlike other tech leaders, he has been eager to meet with policymakers around the world, not just in the United States but also in South America, Africa, Europe and Asia, in an effort to encourage and influence the development of AI regulations. Presumably, he is advocating for rules that would benefit OpenAI’s business interests.
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