Altman: We do “weird” things like building massive data centers so there will be “universal prosperity”

Fresh off a revised agreement with Microsoft that makes significant changes to the terms of the contentious $13 billion partnership between the two companies, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman offered an update on the principles that guide the company as it inches toward artificial general intelligence.

The memo lays out a familiar assortment of rosy predictions couched with dire warnings: AGI will lead to things “we’ve only let ourselves dream about in sci-fi,” but it also could lead to “catastrophic harm” and “potential corrosive societal effects.”

One interpretation of the memo could be that OpenAI is defending its choice to monetize its products with advertising. The argument is that competitors like Anthropic offer skimpy free offerings, and hide the empowering, life-changing AI tools behind paid accounts. OpenAI has emphasized its goal of democratizing AI — making AI as accessible to as many people as possible — which can only really happen if the product is supported by ads.

Altman seemed to acknowledge the public’s growing unease with the AI industry’s insatiable thirst for building larger and larger data centers around the world. This massive outlay of capital is all about “universal prosperity”:

“A lot of the things that we do that look weird — buying huge amounts of compute while our revenue is relatively small, vertically integrating to lower costs and make our technology easier to use, pushing to build datacenters all around the world, and much more — are driven by our fundamental belief in a future of universal prosperity.”

Altman said the company will have to be resilient in how it responds to new risks created by this fast-evolving technology, which will require partnering with competitors and governments to responsibly develop new tools, like how the company opted to let partners assess its advanced cybersecurity tool before wider release.

The memo also aims to give OpenAI the right to revisit these principles as the technology evolves:

“We are heading into a very impactful phase as the technology continues to improve. It’s very fair to critique us on every decision; we deserve an enormous amount of scrutiny given the weight of what we are doing. We will not get everything right, but we will learn quickly and course-correct.”