In a new post on his personal blog, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman warned that AI could lead to plenty of economic inequality while allowing authoritarian governments to “control their population through mass surveillance and loss of autonomy.” OpenAI has made it its goal to realize “artificial general intelligence” — the still-entirely-hypothetical point at which an AI can achieve and surpass the intellectual capabilities of a human — that “benefits all of humanity.” If anyone does manage to build AGI, ensuring that the “socioeconomic value” benefits all equally may prove far more difficult, especially after AI causes countless people to lose their jobs. “In particular, it does seem like the balance of power between capital and labor could easily get messed up, and this may require early intervention,” Altman argued. In response, Altman proposes looking into “strange-sounding ideas like giving some ‘compute budget’ to enable everyone on Earth to use a lot of AI.” Alternatively, the CEO suggests “just relentlessly driving the cost of intelligence as low as possible,” which would also allegedly allow everybody to benefit equally from AI. Altman argued that “metrics we care about” including “health outcomes, economic prosperity” simply “get better on average and over the long-term.” Yet “increasing equality does not seem technologically determined, and getting this right may require new ideas.” “Anyone in 2035 should be able to marshall the intellectual capacity equivalent to everyone in 2025,” he concluded. “Everyone should have access to unlimited genius to direct however they can imagine.” But should we…AI Likely to Increase Inequality, Sam Altman Admits, or Control the "Population Through Mass Surveillance and Loss of Autonomy"