Sam Altman

First, it is vital that AI companies–especially those working on the most powerful models–adhere to an appropriate set of safety requirements, including internal and external testing prior to release and publication of evaluation results. source Verified

People need to have agency, the ability to influence this. They need, we need to sort of jointly be architects of the future. source Unverified

Development of superhuman machine intelligence (SMI) [1] is probably the greatest threat to the continued existence of humanity. There are other threats that I think are more certain to happen (for example, an engineered virus with a long incubation period and a high mortality rate) but are unlikely to destroy every human in the universe in the way that SMI could. Also, most of these other big threats are already widely feared. It is extremely hard to put a timeframe on when this will happen (more on this later), and it certainly feels to most people working in the field that it’s still many, many years away. But it’s also extremely hard to believe that it isn’t very likely that it will happen at some point. SMI does not have to be the inherently evil sci-fi version to kill us all. A more probable scenario is that it simply doesn’t care about us much either way, but in an effort to accomplish some other goal (most goals, if you think about them long enough, could make use of resources currently being used by humans) wipes us out. Certain goals, like self-preservation, could clearly benefit from no humans. We wash our hands not because we actively wish ill towards the bacteria and viruses on them, but because we don’t want them to get in the way of our plans. (2015) source Unverified

I think it’s good to start studying [basic income] early. I’m fairly confident that at some point in the future, as technology continues to eliminate traditional jobs and massive new wealth gets created, we’re going to see some version of this at a national scale. source Unverified

We talk about the IAEA as a model where the world has said 'OK, very dangerous technology, let's all put some guard rails.' (2023) source Unverified