Why OpenAI Cofounder Says He’s Still Optimistic About Generative AI

• Greg Brockman, OpenAI president and cofounder, said he’s still optimistic about the future of AI.
• Brockman spoke to a large crowd in one of the kickoff panels at South By Southwest in Austin. 
• Despite concerns around misinformation and sentience, he thinks that AI will be a force for good. 

OpenAI cofounder and president Greg Brockman, who helped start the company in 2015, spoke to an overflowing audience at the South by Southwest conference in Austin, Texas, and repeated his concerns around the supposed bias against certain sources of information, which he had previously shared in an interview with The Information.

“We wanted a system to be egalitarian and treat all mainstream sites equally, but I think people were right to criticize us,” he said. 

OpenAI’s core chatbot ChatGPT-3, which launched to the public in November and saw massive early adoption from users around the world, has been criticized for its potential to replace human workers in creative fields, or spread misinformation. 

The chatbot has also come under fire from Elon Musk, who also cofounded the startup, for its alleged bias against certain sources of information, and skewing its content to have a more liberal political bias. Musk, who severed ties with the company in 2018, is putting together a team to build a rival, “anti-woke” AI chatbot, The Information reported.

Brockman also spoke about the possibilities for positive change with the use of AI and how it would ultimately free up humans to focus on important work that AI can’t yet do.

“The most important thing is going to be these higher level skills — judgement, and knowing when to dig into the details,” he said of the future of working in a post-AI world.  “I think that the real story here, in my mind, is amplification of what humans can do.”