‘Bad and dangerous…’: OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s warning to young people who rely ‘too much’ on ChatGPT
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has warned against ‘too much’ reliance on its AI chatbot ChatGPT for decision-making. Speaking at a banking conference hosted by the Federal Reserve this week, Altman said “People rely on ChatGPT too much. There’s young people who say things like, ‘I can’t make any decision in my life without telling ChatGPT everything that’s going on. It knows me, it knows my friends. I’m gonna do whatever it says.’ That feels really bad to me.” Sam Altman said that this over-reliance on ChatGPT is “a really common thing with young people.”Stating that OpenAI is “trying to understand what to do about it,” he added “Even if ChatGPT gives great advice, even if ChatGPT gives way better advice than any human therapist, something about collectively deciding we’re going to live our lives the way AI tells us feels bad and dangerous”. Earlier this year, Altman revealed how people use ChatGPT depending on their age. Speaking at Sequoia Capital’s AI Ascent event, Altman was asked a question about how young people use ChatGPT. Replying to the question, he said “Gross oversimplification, but like, older people use ChatGPT as a Google replacement”, adding “Maybe people in their 20s and 30s use it like a life advisor, something”. “And then, like, people in college use it as an operating system,” he stated. “They really do use it like an operating system. They have complex ways to set it up to connect it to a bunch of files, and they have fairly complex prompts memorized in their head or in something where they paste in and out,” Sam Altman added. “There’s this other thing where they don’t really make life decisions without asking ChatGPT what they should do. It has the full context on every person in their life and what they’ve talked about”, he further explained.
50% teenagers trust information given by AI: Survey
Sam Altman’s remarks come amidst a recent survey that revealed 72% of respondents used AI companions at least one time. The study conducted by Common Sense Media surveyed 1,060 teens between the ages of 13 and 17 responded during April and May. As per the findings, 52% of the respondents said that they use the technology at least a few times per month. Half of the people in the survey said they trust the advice and information from their AI companion at least a little. But trust levels were different by age. Younger teens were more likely to trust AI — 27% of those aged 13 to 14 said so, compared to 20% of those aged 15 to 17.
