Sam Altman, CEO of ChatGPT, warned of a potential “world-shaking” cyberattack this year due to advancements in artificial intelligence. Altman expressed concerns that the rapid development of AI could lead to significant vulnerabilities if misused.
While many discussions around AI focus on its impacts on the job market and environmental concerns, Altman emphasizes a more immediate risk. He stated that open-source AI models could enable catastrophic cyberattacks that are “totally possible” within the next 12 months, calling for increased efforts from cybersecurity defenders to mitigate these threats.
In an interview with Axios, Altman elaborated on these cyber threats. “In the next year, we will see significant threats we have to mitigate from cyber,” he said. He noted that further enhancing existing cybersecurity measures will require collaboration among companies, platforms, and governments.
Altman also highlighted the potential for increased bioterrorism facilitated by advancements in AI-driven biology. He warned that while AI can lead to significant medical breakthroughs, it also risks enabling malicious actors to misuse such technology. “Someone’s going to try and misuse those,” he stated.
He pointed out that the current safety measures are effective while responsible companies hold frontier AI models. However, he cautioned that powerful open-source models capable of advanced biological manipulation could soon pose serious threats. “The need for society to be resilient to terrorist groups using models to try and create novel pathogens, that’s no longer a theoretical thing,” Altman said.
The complexity of developing solutions to these emerging threats could heighten the risks associated with AI. Altman concluded that the ongoing developments in AI technology may not have comprehensive or concrete solutions at this stage, increasing the potential for significant global threats in the near future.
