The OpenAI chief also said that the American company is against regulations for smaller AI startups.
ChatGPT parent OpenAI is not training GPT-5 currently and is not even close to doing it, the company’s chief executive officer Sam Altman said at an event organized by an Indian media outlet The Economic Times in New Delhi on Wednesday. Altman’s comments came on the heels of growing concerns among various researchers and industry experts about the pace of AI development and the potential threat it poses.
“We have a lot of work to do before GPT-5. It takes a lot of time,” Altman said. “We are working on the new ideas that we think we need for it, but we are nowhere close to the start. There need to be more safety audits: I wish I could tell you about the timeline of the next GPT,” he added.
In the same interview, the OpenAI chief said that the American company is against regulations for smaller AI startups. “We have explicitly said there should be no regulation on smaller companies. The only regulation we have called for is on ourselves and people bigger,” he said.
Altman’s India visit is a part of the company’s larger objective to meet and build confidence among lawmakers across the globe about OpenAI’s willingness to work with them to monitor and frame laws governing the potential abuse of such AI technologies. While OpenAI’s ChatGPT has taken the world by storm since its launch in November last year, concerns around fake news, plagiarism, biasedness, manipulation, and privacy have led several other authorities globally to study and investigate the impact and potential risks that such AI platforms could pose.
In April, Tesla chief Elon Musk along with a group of AI experts called all AI labs to immediately pause the training of AI systems more powerful than GPT-4 for at least six months. However, it was later reported that Musk is planning to launch a new artificial intelligence company – X.AI, a rival of ChatGPT parent OpenAI.
Around the same time, the European Union lawmakers in April reached common ground on the draft for new copyright rules for generative AI tools like ChatGPT. Calling the current AI draft by the European lawmaker “over-regulating,” Altman said last month that OpenAI might consider leaving Europe if it could not comply with Europe’s upcoming regulations on artificial intelligence. However, before pulling out, OpenAI will try to comply with the European rules once they are in motion, Altman added.
Meanwhile, Google chief executive officer Sundar Pichai also said last month that the American tech major is committed to work with European lawmakers on what is being referred to as an AI Pact. “We expect technology in Europe to respect all of our rules, on data protection, online safety, and artificial intelligence. In Europe, it’s not pick and choose. I am pleased that @SundarPichai recognises this, and that he is committed to complying with all EU rules,” European Commissioner for Internal Market Thierry Breton tweeted on May 24.
