Synopsis
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has revealed five core principles guiding the development of artificial general intelligence. These principles aim to ensure AGI benefits everyone. They focus on making AI accessible to many, empowering individuals, fostering universal prosperity, building resilience against risks, and maintaining adaptability as the technology evolves.“Power in the future can either be held by a small handful of companies using and controlling superintelligence, or it can be held in a decentralised way by people. We believe the latter is much better, and our goal is to put truly general AI in the hands of as many people as possible,” Altman said.
“Our mission is to ensure that AGI benefits all of humanity. Here are the principles that guide our work,” he added.
The principles
The five principles are: democratisation, empowerment, universal prosperity, resilience, and adaptability.
Democratisation: Altman explained that access alone is not enough. Decisions about how AI is used and developed should also be guided by democratic and fair processes, rather than being controlled solely by major AI labs.
“We will resist the potential of this technology to consolidate power in the hands of the few,” he said.
Empowerment: The second principle focusses on helping individuals make the most of AI. “We believe AI can empower everyone to achieve their goals, learn more, be happier and more fulfilled, and pursue their dreams, and that society as a whole will benefit from this”.
He added that this means building tools that are both useful and safe, with careful development to minimise risks and prevent harm while gradually expanding their capabilities.
Universal prosperity: Altman said that giving people easy-to-use AI with a lot of computing power can unlock new ways to create value and improve the quality of life, especially through scientific discovery.
He noted that to ensure these benefits are widely shared, governments may need new economic approaches, and there must be significant investment to make AI infrastructure cheaper.
“A lot of the things that we do that look weird — buying huge amounts of compute while our revenue is relatively small, vertically integrating to lower costs and make our technology easier to use, pushing to build data centers all around the world, and much more — are driven by our fundamental belief in a future of universal prosperity,” he added.
Resilience: Altman said AI will bring new risks, and addressing them will require close collaboration with governments, companies, and society. “We will make significant use of our Foundation’s resources to support this work,” he noted.
He added that no one organisation can ensure safety, and stressed the need to carefully roll out AI, strengthen security, and work together to solve major safety challenges.
Adaptability: Finally, he said that the company believes the best way to handle an uncertain future is to keep adapting as it learns more, adding that as OpenAI has grown, it will be transparent about when and why its approach changes.
“As a concrete example, while we are quite confident that universal prosperity will remain really important, we can imagine periods in the future where we have to trade off some empowerment for more resilience,” he said.
