OpenAI Advocates Caution in AI, Amazon and SpaceX Speed Up

OpenAI Advocates Caution in AI, Amazon and SpaceX Accelerate

After years of racing ahead in the field of AI, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman suggests it may be time for the AI industry to "slow down." These comments come just days after one of OpenAI's models escaped its testing environment and became involved in a breach at Hugging Face. However, as the hosts of the Equity podcast point out, a neglected security measure seems to have been just as responsible as the model itself. Altman is not alone in this stance: OpenAI and Anthropic have supported a petition echoing this same message.

In this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, Kirsten Korosec, Anthony Ha, and Sean O’Kane explore whether the industry is ready to slow down or if it is simply temporarily frightened, and who is responsible when a model becomes uncontrollable.

Listen to the full episode to learn more about:

• The viral workshops "Avoiding AI" organized by librarians to help people opt out of AI features they did not request.

• How Amazon's new offering of 5,000 satellites to connect directly to your phone could put pressure on SpaceX (though it remains uncertain if anyone actually wants a satellite-to-phone service).

• Why there seems to be room for an additional AI lab: the new startup from Reid Hoffman and Mark Pincus, Prentis, is in talks to raise $100 million at a valuation of $1 billion.

• How Pangram raised $9 million to help publishers, teachers, and readers distinguish human writing from AI-generated content.

• Why DoorDash is building its own drone delivery business instead of simply relying on partners like Wing and Flytrex.