[SXSW] The man behind ChatGPT keeps his lips sealed

By Maurice Wenneker, straight from SXSW, Austin, Texas. 

Peter Deng, the Vice President of Consumer Products at OpenAI and the leading figure behind ChatGPT, was interviewed yesterday on the main stage of SXSW. The topic? ‘AI and Humanity’s Co-evolution’.

The interview naturally turned into a praise of using ChatGPT as a partner in this new ‘AI-powered’ world and was reminiscent of the earlier tech giants who primarily see their software as a ‘way to save the world’ and ‘to ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity’.

Beautiful goals that sound great coming from a kind and humble man, who previously played a key role in the development of Facebook Messenger and Instagram. It was therefore more than interesting how OpenAI envisions this future; a future in which the use of ChatGPT allows us to have more time to engage with the big questions of life.

There was a vague answer to the question ‘how one could ensure not to be replaced by AI as an employee’. But when asked whether artists should be compensated for the use of their art in training OpenAI’s models, he evaded the question. This is not surprising since OpenAI is legally under fire for the use of data to train, for example, DALL·E – the app that generates images within ChatGPT.

"Artists should be as much a part of the ecosystem as possible," said Deng. "I believe that if we can find a way to make the art creation flywheel spin faster, we as an industry can really help a bit more..." "In a sense, every artist is inspired by artists who have come before him, and I wonder how much of that will be accelerated by this."

The audience made it clear that they indeed thought some form of compensation was necessary, and this was not really a satisfying answer. This created an uncomfortable moment on stage. Fortunately, he managed to salvage the atmosphere by urging the audience to remain 'curious'.

I'm particularly curious about the following: If your mission statement is ‘to ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity’, eventually, someone must pay the piper.

Maurice Wenneker is CEO of PAKT

PAKT is an European ecosystem of nine production companies in The Netherlands, Belgium and Sweden. With an in-house team of 145 professionals we are dedicated to delivering high quality film and photographic content for global brands and international ad agencies at scale

www.pakt.co

 

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