Altman names AI's two existential risks: loss of control and power concentration
dhadfieldmenell · x · 2026-09-14
Sam Altman laid out two catastrophic paths for AI progress: losing control of the future to AI, and a world where an extraordinarily powerful AI lets one person or company impose their worldview on everyone else. He argues alignment and safety techniques must stay ahead of capability progress, requiring a narrow middle path.
Reposter LRudL adds that under the right framing, loss of control and concentration of power are very similar: whether the actor is pure AI or human+AI, any actor that makes its power uncontestable wrecks everyone else — takeover by anyone is bad (point credited to Richard Ngo).
More from AGI Musings
- 25 Fields Medalists warn of AI-math misalignment as @ramez pushes back with chess analogy — juanbenet · 2026-09-14
- Europe's Transformative AI Strategy met with skepticism: frontier AI is a practice, not an asset — sebkrier · 2026-09-14
- Reviewer pushes back: average ML papers are also "very meh" — jankulveit · 2026-09-14
- Researchers float yearly paper quota: max 5 submissions per author to fix publishing — ziv_ravid · 2026-09-14
- LeCun's ECCV slides spark debate: LLMs are an off-ramp for human-level AI, but maybe not ASI — teortaxesTex · 2026-09-14
- Musk: AI and robotics are the only path to universal high income — elonmusk · 2026-09-14