In December, Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, donated $1 million to President-elect Donald J. Trump's inaugural fund, joining other tech executives who are working to improve their relations with Trump.
Now, he and his company are laying out their vision for the development of artificial intelligence in the United States, hoping to determine how the next presidential administration handles this increasingly important technology.
On Monday, OpenAI released what it calls its economic plan for “ai in America,” suggesting ways policymakers can spur ai development in the United States, minimize the risks the technology poses, and maintain an edge over China.
“We believe the United States must act now to maximize the possibilities of ai while minimizing its harms,” Chris Lehane, head of global policy at OpenAI, wrote in the 15-page document. “We want to work with policymakers to ensure that the benefits of ai are shared responsibly and equitably.”
OpenAI kicked off the ai boom in late 2022 with the launch of the online chatbot ChatGPT. The company continues to lead the field but faces countless competitors. One of its biggest rivals, xAI, is run by Elon Musk, who has developed a close relationship with Trump.
Many ai companies and independent experts believe that technologies like ChatGPT can increase economic growth by accelerating work and research in areas as far-flung as computer programming, medicine, education and finance. But the continued development of these technologies requires enormous amounts of computing power and electricity.
OpenAI and its rivals are racing to expand the set of giant computing data centers needed to build and operate their ai systems, which will require hundreds of billions of dollars in new investments. With its new economic plan, OpenAI hopes to encourage government policies that can facilitate that additional infrastructure.
In particular, the company has called on policymakers to allow significant investments in US ai projects by investors in the Middle East, although the Biden administration has been cautious about such investments. OpenAI maintains that if countries like the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia do not invest in American infrastructure, their money will flow to China.
“Are those countries going to build on American rails or on CCP rails?” Lehane said in an interview, referring to the Chinese Communist Party. He described nations like the Emirates and Saudi Arabia not as allies but rather as “swing states” that will choose the United States or China for ai investments.
OpenAI has also called on the government to take a light-touch approach in creating regulations aimed at ensuring the security of technologies created by OpenAI and its American rivals.
(The New York Times has sued OpenAI and its partner, Microsoft, accusing them of copyright infringement of news content related to artificial intelligence systems. OpenAI and Microsoft have denied those claims.)
Last year, California lawmakers tried unsuccessfully to pass a bill that would impose restrictions on technology companies that build artificial intelligence systems. OpenAI executives argued that the federal government, not states, should control regulations related to the safety of ai development.
“That would just create a real dissonance, both on the national security front and on the economic competitiveness front,” Lehane said.
Altman will begin a charm offensive with a Jan. 30 event in Washington, where he will discuss the future of ai development with lawmakers, economists and Trump administration officials and demonstrate new OpenAI technology that he says will showcase economic power. of ai.
