- Sam Altman appeared on The Tonight Show to highlight ChatGPT’s global growth and positive impact
- He called AI an “equalizing force” that gives powerful tools to ordinary people
- While acknowledging risks, Altman remained optimistic about AI’s future and OpenAI’s responsibilities
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman took a kind of victory lap mixed with caveats The Tonight Show This week, host Jimmy Fallon shared that ChatGPT’s meteoric rise has been a great blessing, but one that comes with a few growing pains.
Altman leaned into optimism, but perhaps not blind boosterism. He shared his belief that artificial intelligence, especially the systems coming out of OpenAI, are helping to reshape society in profoundly positive ways. He compared the rise of ChatGPT to the global spread of the smartphone.
“I think there are a lot of downsides to technology, but there are a lot of upsides. And one of the upsides is that it’s kind of a balancing force in a lot of ways,” Altman said. “The richest, most powerful person in the world got the same piece of hardware that, you know, billions of other people got. And I think AI is pushing in the same direction.”
Look at
Although one of the architects behind the current AI boom, Altman is not necessarily a face familiar to casual TV audiences. However, he set out to change that by presenting his pro-AI case to Fallon in person, explaining that more than 800 million people now use ChatGPT weekly.
“It’s a three-year-old technology,” he added. “No other technology has ever been… adopted by the world so quickly. It’s a really general thing.”
For Altman, that speed means people are voting with their time and trust. They use ChatGPT not as a novelty, but as a tool for all kinds of tasks in their lives. AI helps them write resumes, code software, generate travel plans and manage their day-to-day.
He sees AI, especially as implemented in ChatGPT, as a distribution of power, not a concentration of it. Yes, OpenAI is backed by Microsoft and armed with billions of cloud computing. But the output, he argued, is shared.
AI all over
Notably, he didn’t arrive on Fallon’s stage to announce or pitch a product, despite the rumored GPT-5.2 release this week. Not having anything to plug suggests that he really just wants people to believe that ChatGPT and AI as a whole are useful innovations.
However, Altman did not ignore the complications of AI in his interview.
“One of the things I’m concerned about,” he admitted, “is just the speed of change happening in the world right now.” But he wants people to adapt, weigh in, build guardrails. “You’d imagine we’re wrong.”
On the surface, Altman made an eloquent case, though it was hardly the place to explore the larger issues surrounding how AI tools are developed and used. There was no room to discuss issues of privacy, ownership and use of content, or the resources devoted to AI and the technology’s potentially dangerous economic fate.
Altman’s foray into late-night TV wasn’t flashy, but his vision of AI as a utopian equalizer is certainly colorful. Whether that will translate to long-term success may depend on what he does next.
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