Altman's remarks came at a Microsoft event in Seattle, where he spoke to developers just as a new controversy erupted over an OpenAI AI voice that closely resembled that of the actress Scarlett Johansson.
The CEO, who rose to global prominence after OpenAI released ChatGPT in 2022, is also grappling with questions about the safety of the company's AI following the departure of the team responsible for mitigating long-term AI risks.
"My biggest piece of advice is this is a special time and take advantage of it," Altman told the audience of developers seeking to build new products using OpenAI's technology.
"This is not the time to delay what you're planning to do or wait for the next thing," he added.
OpenAI is a close partner of Microsoft and provides the foundational technology, primarily the GPT-4 large language model, for building AI tools.
Microsoft has jumped on the AI bandwagon, pushing out new products and urging users to embrace generative AI's capabilities.
"We kind of take for granted" that GPT-4, while "far from perfect...is generally considered robust enough and safe enough for a wide variety of uses," Altman said.
Altman insisted that OpenAI had put in "a huge amount of work" to ensure the safety of its models.
"When you take a medicine, you want to know what's going to be safe, and with our model, you want to know it's going to be robust to behave the way you want it to," he added.
However, questions about OpenAI's commitment to safety resurfaced last week when the company dissolved its "superalignment" group, a team dedicated to mitigating the long-term dangers of AI.
In announcing his departure, team co-leader Jan Leike criticized OpenAI for prioritizing "shiny new products" over safety in a series of posts on X (formerly Twitter).
"Over the past few months, my team has been sailing against the wind," Leike said.
"These problems are quite hard to get right, and I am concerned we aren't on a trajectory to get there."
This controversy was swiftly followed by a public statement from Johansson, who expressed outrage over a voice used by OpenAI's ChatGPT that sounded similar to her voice in the 2013 film "Her."
The voice in question, called "Sky," was featured last week in the release of OpenAI's more human-like GPT-4o model.
In a short statement on Tuesday, Altman apologized to Johansson but insisted the voice was not based on hers.
16 top AI firms make new safety commitments at Seoul summit
Seoul (AFP) May 21, 2024 -
More than a dozen of the world's leading artificial intelligence firms made fresh safety commitments at a global summit in Seoul on Tuesday, the British government said in a statement.
The agreement with 16 tech firms -- which include ChatGPT-maker OpenAI, Google DeepMind and Anthropic -- builds on the consensus reached at the inaugural global AI safety summit at Bletchley Park in Britain last year.
"These commitments ensure the world's leading AI companies will provide transparency and accountability on their plans to develop safe AI," UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said in a statement released by Britain's Department for Science, Innovation and Technology.
Under the agreement, the AI firms that have not already shared how they assess the risks of their technology will publish those frameworks, according to the statement.
These will include what risks are "deemed intolerable" and what the firms will do to ensure that these thresholds are not crossed.
"In the most extreme circumstances, the companies have also committed to 'not develop or deploy a model or system at all' if mitigations cannot keep risks below the thresholds," the statement added.
The definition of these thresholds will be decided ahead of the next AI summit, due to be hosted by France in 2025.
The firms that have agreed on the safety rules also include US tech titans Microsoft, Amazon, IBM and Instagram parent Meta; France's Mistral AI; and Zhipu.ai from China.
In his opening remarks, South Korea's President Yoon Suk Yeol flagged "growing concerns over potential risks and negative impacts of AI, including fake news through deepfake and the digital divide."
"Since the digital space is hyper-connected and transcends national borders, we need digital norms at the global level," he added.
- Danger of 'deepfakes' -
The stratospheric success of ChatGPT soon after its 2022 release sparked a gold rush in generative AI, with tech firms around the world pouring billions of dollars into developing their own models.
Generative AI models can generate text, photos, audio and even video from simple prompts, and its proponents have heralded them as a breakthrough that will improve lives and businesses around the world.
But critics, rights activists and governments have warned that they can be misused in a wide variety of situations, including the manipulation of voters through fake news stories or so-called "deepfake" pictures and videos of politicians.
Many have called for international standards to govern the development and use of AI, and have called for action at summits such as the two-day gathering in Seoul this week.
In addition to safety, the Seoul summit will discuss how governments can help spur innovation, including into AI research at universities.
Participants will also consider ways to ensure the technology is open to all and can aid in tackling issues such as climate change and poverty.
The Seoul summit comes days after OpenAI confirmed that it had disbanded a team devoted to mitigating the long-term dangers of advanced AI.
"The field of AI safety is quickly evolving and we are particularly glad to endorse the commitments' emphasis on refining approaches alongside the science," Anna Makanju, OpenAI's vice president of global affairs, said in the statement announcing the new commitments on Tuesday.
The two-day summit will be partly virtual, with a mix of closed-door sessions and some open to the public in Seoul.
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