Sam Altman thinks giving everyone a ‘piece of GPT’ could pay for UBI

Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI and chair of Tools for the Humanities, believes that the advances being made in today's frontier artificial intelligence (AI) models could lead to a large-scale reshaping of socioeconomics.

In a recent interview on the All-In podcast, Altman recently unveiled a vision to treat “computing” as a resource and asset and provide a universal basic income (UBI).

While the interview touched on a number of topics, it quickly turned to the dangers of AI and how humanity is dealing with threats ranging from AI-induced human extinction to job displacement. On the former subject, Altman admits that the time may come when AI models are capable enough to create such risks.

His solution is an international regulatory board capable of overseeing large projects, so that startups are not limited by laws that can hinder growth.

“I think there will come a time in the not-too-distant future… when frontier AI systems can cause significant global damage. And for those kinds of systems … I'd like to see some kind of international agency that looks at the most powerful systems and ensures reasonable security tests.

Altman assured the all-in team that GPT-4, OpenAI's state-of-the-art production model, poses no “significant” threat to human life.

On the jobs front, Altman is a well-known advocate for UBI. In addition to OpenAI, he also leads the organization Tools for Humanity, whose flagship product is WorldCoin, an encryption and authentication platform. Worldcoin is given to anyone who wants to prove their humanity. Holders will then receive a monthly token payment.

Speaking to an all-group panel, Altman criticized government poverty assistance programs as largely ineffective and called for a simpler, more respectful approach to UBI:

“I'm not a big fan of how the government handles most of the policies designed to help the poor, and I believe that if you just give people money, they'll make good decisions and the market will do the work.”

“It certainly doesn't make people happy,” he said, noting that giving people money won't solve all problems. But “it can solve some problems and give people a better understanding of how to help themselves,” he said.

As for why he's become such an advocate of UBI, Altman says it could have a huge impact that he and his colleagues realized in 2016 when they started taking AI seriously. They started conducting studies and found that UBI showed promise.

Now, Altman believes the UBI paradigm itself may be ripe for growth:

“2016 was a long time ago. …I wonder if the future will be more like universal basic computing instead of universal basic income and everyone can get a piece of GPT-7 computing and use it, resell it, donate it to someone and benefit cancer research.

Related: Apple Finalizes Deal with OpenAI for ChatGPT iPhone Integration: Report