Artificial intelligence can create immense positives for the world and will be an incredibly powerful system that can solve the biggest problems facing societies, including addressing climate change, providing education and eradicating diseases.

This statement was made by Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI – the company that created ChatGPT – during the latest edition of Qatar Foundation’s Education City Speaker Series held at Qatar National Library.

HE Sheikha Hind bint Hamad Al Thani, Vice Chairperson and CEO of Qatar Foundation, joined Altman’s talk

Various aspects of AI

Altman shed light on various aspects of Artificial Intelligence (AI), such as its role in education, its risks, the inequity of AI technology among developing and developed countries, and expert predictions for what AI will mean for the world in the future.

The positive is, technology can create worlds which will be immense, and the main point I would like to make is that we are still at the very, very beginning – and that we can get immensely better with more skill systems.

So, everything happening now will look totally unprecedented for years, according to Altman.

Speaking about what experts predict for the future of AI, Altman reminded us that, five years ago, the consensus from all the experts about automation was that robotics and physical tasks would take over.

For example, they said truck drivers were in bad shape. Then they said to wait longer to see whether basic cognitive labour would be taken over by AI, and then even longer to see whether creativity got taken over by AI. And it’s been exactly the opposite. And he highlighted that anyone who predicts the future of AI should not be believed, because it’s very difficult to do.

Crossing over on the other side of AI

Moderated by Elyas Felfoul, Director of Policy Development and Partnerships at Qatar Foundation’s global education think tank WISE, the session gave members of Qatar’s community the chance to interact with Altman.

One audience question spotlighted the issue of fear of change and job losses through AI, with Altman responding: I think we’re going to manage to get to the other side – we have to – but this is going to be a dramatic change.

In this next decade, we are going to live through history in a way that we haven’t done in this world. The socio-economic contract is going to change a lot. There is fear, for sure, but it is up to us to figure out how to do good.

Altman said that with technology, there is going to be an economic impact – and that’s unavoidable. Over time, he said he thinks AI will automate more and more jobs.

I’m pretty sure that in most of the categories, humans will just operate at a higher level and quality. We’ve seen this with previous technology – computers, for example. And it has been seen that, for the most part, people have been able to just do more and better. I think that is what will happen with AI.

During his time at Education City, Altman also visited Qatar Computing Research Institute.

The Education City Speaker Series is a platform for dialogue that allows the public to hear from and interact with local, regional and international thought leaders and experts.

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