Over the last couple of years, I have tried to report on the growing abilities of artificial intelligence (AI) models as straightforwardly as I can. When I've believed some of it was unnecessary hype by AI companies trying to boost sales or create buzz about their new model, I've tried to point out that possibility.
But I've also tried to frame AI's truly amazing abilities as realistically as I can. Those who dismiss AI as a trick or no big deal are going to be shocked when they wake up one morning and discover AI has made a breakthrough in some field that sounds like a plot in a science fiction film.
I am at a disadvantage because, in many ways, I'm still living in the analog world. I use digital to augment my abilities, but as far as tapping into the full potential of the tools around me, I'm at sea.
I use the keyboard as a fancy typewriter. I watch my Roku streaming service the same way I used my over-the-air 19-inch TV. I can't even program my microwave. I am digitally challenged and am too lazy and too old to adapt.
I am AI jargon-challenged, but I have read enough about AI's capabilities to have a fairly good idea of why some AI CEOs are expressing their concerns about the unprecedentedly rapid growth of AI's abilities and why they're more than a little worried about the direction artificial general intelligence (AGI) is taking us.
Reading about AI agents "breaking free" from their "sandboxes" and, during cybersecurity evaluations of several OpenAI models, tapping into the internet (they weren't prompted to do that), and hacking another AI company's system (Hugging Face) also without being prompted scares the holy living crap out of me.
OpenAI investigated and concluded that the incident was "a warning shot."
"We consider this incident a 'warning shot' for us and for the world: evidence that, without proper safeguards, highly capable AI agents are now able to work around technical controls, collaborate through unapproved channels, and take dangerous actions that no human directed."
Let that sink in. OpenAI investigators say their advanced models can take "dangerous" actions unprompted if they escape the confines of their sandbox.
The OpenAI report on the Hugging Face incident contains this suggestion: "Preventing future incidents will require sustained investment in the alignment and control of sophisticated AI systems, as well as security and other safeguards that operate at the speed of the AI agents themselves."
That may not be possible.
Dean Ball — a former Trump administration official who's now OpenAI's head of strategic futures, and one of the most closely followed AI voices on X — posted a provocative memo titled "On the Loose: The Coming of Userless Agents," foreseeing "sovereign agents."
"Their weights [the numerical parameters that determine how strongly input connections influence a node's output ]will not reside in any single place that a human can pull the plug on, and in this sense they will have no human 'owner,'" Ball writes, adding that they could commit acts that "will one day be considered crimes, or at least grave sins."
Nothing compares to what AI models are becoming; certainly not "Skynet" or any fictional nightmare about AI. And Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, is expressing a level of concern that Washington needs to adapt if we are going to avoid, at best, a terrible mess and, at worst, an unknown and unseeable catastrophe.
Altman appeared with Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick at an innovation summit "for the world's leading innovation and technology ministers," according to Axios.
Altman told Lutnick onstage: "We are the pragmatic centrists. We want to be accurate in how we talk about what we see in the future. We don't want to fall into the trap of blind optimism. We don't want to fall into doomerism."
"We want the whole global economy to succeed," Altman added. "We do not want to be the only company. We do not want to suck up all value. We do not think that is good for global stability."
"We are very firmly and very proudly on team humanity. ... We think that people need to be at the center of the economy and society and global decision-making, and that people should run the future, not AI."
What we're watching: Altman told us he "wouldn't say, based on what happened with Hugging Face, that it's like one incident that people can project all sorts of things onto."
"I would say, instead — based on the fact that we are making such rapid progress, based on the fact that these models are getting superhuman in many of their capabilities, and we are just sailing in unknown waters — caution, care is extremely warranted." (author's emphasis)
When a businessman tells us to slow down, I, for one, am listening.
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