OpenAI is now 10 years old, but how well has its mission statement to 'benefit all humanity' aged?
Almost exactly 10 years ago, OpenAI was founded. The AI outfit's CEO, Sam Altman, has marked the anniversary with a retrospective blog post which concludes much as the company's original mission statement began, with a call to "benefit all humanity." Question is, how well has that ambition aged?
Specifically, Altman signs his latest blog post off with these comments:
"Our mission is to ensure that AGI benefits all of humanity. We still have a lot of work in front of us, but I’m really proud of the trajectory the team has us on. We are seeing tremendous benefits in what people are doing with the technology already today, and we know there is much more coming over the next couple of years."
It may seem convenient, trite, and not a little facetious to use PC gaming as a prism through which to view OpenAI. But it's actually a pretty handy starting point, not least because this is such a massive, unwieldy topic. So, anything that breaks it down into manageable chunks is very useful.
Needless to say, OpenAI and its broader influence has been far from unambiguously beneficial for PC gamers. As things stand today, there are legitimate reasons to doubt whether it will be practical or affordable to buy a new gaming PC in the next few years, such is the catastrophic impact of the demand for computer memory by the AI industry in general and OpenAI in particular.
OpenAI itself is acutely culpable in that process thanks to its megadeals for memory with Samsung and SK Hynix. At this point, it's quite possible that the ludicrous net impact of the current AI trend is that consumers will have as much AI slop as they can eat, but they'll be accessing it on knackered old phones, laptops and PCs, because they won't be able to afford new ones.
That is but one small detail in what is a very broad picture. In other words, the AI boom is such an enormous, imponderable phenomenon, it's bound to have all kinds of wide-reaching and unpredictable outcomes. And we're nowhere near knowing what the net benefits and costs will be.
Putting aside concerns around consumer electronics pricing, there's the fact the entire stock market seems to be propped up by AI. And what about the gargantuan power footprint of AI? Or the water usage and impact on jobs? And that's before you even touch on the broader existential threat that some see AI posing.
In his blog post, Altman observes, "when I look back at the photos from the early days, I am first struck by how young everyone looks. But then I’m struck by how unreasonably optimistic everyone looks, and how happy."
Unreasonably optimistic given the current context? That I get. In the end, and from the perspective as a casual outside observer, it's hard to grasp how AI insiders get their head around all these issues. How do they press on, "optimistically", with a technology that poses so many risks, that comes with so many overwhelming ambiguities?
You could argue that pretty much all new technologies pose some risk and come with some downsides. But they're not usually this existential. And they don't often threaten to implode largely unrelated industries before any really substantial benefits have kicked in. If nothing else, it will be interesting to see if Altman is in a position to pen such an optimistic retrospective in another 10 years.