Sam Altman: prediction

Transcript context

…Not this year. Here’s a very difficult question. As you know, both you and I were fans of nuclear power, but we also know, the insurance for nuclear power plants is provided by the government. The plants might be quite safe, but people worry. They’re Nervous Nellies. There’s a lot of parties involved. The federal government does the insurance. Do you worry that the future holds the same for AI companies, or the Feds are your insurer, and how do you plan for that? Again, even if AI is pretty safe, as with nuclear power, people are Nervous Nellies. How will you insure everything? At some level, when something gets sufficiently huge, whether or not they are on paper, the federal government is kind of the insurer of last resort, as we’ve seen in various financial crises and insurance companies screwing things up. I guess, given the magnitude of what I expect AI economic impact to look like, I do think the government ends up as the insurer of last resort, but I think I mean that in a different way than you mean that, and I don’t expect them to actually be writing the policies in the way that maybe they do for nuclear. There’s a big difference between the government being the insurer of last resort and the insurer of first resort. Last resort’s inevitable, but I’m worried they’ll become the insurer of first resort, and that I don’t want.…

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