OpenAI CEO Sam Altman warns ChatGPT and other AI tools could be misused to create a COVID-style pandemic

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman recently raised his concerns about artificial intelligence (AI) tools could potentially be misused to engineer a pandemic on the scale of COVID-19. Speaking in a recent interview with Tucker Carlson, Altman said the growing capability of AI models in biology poses risks if not carefully managed. Sam Altman was answering Carlson’s question on “What are the downsides of AI” when he said that these models are becoming “very good at bio (biology)” and may enable the engineering of a pandemic.

“You know, engineer another COVID-style pandemic, I worry about that,” Altman said. “But because we worry about it, I think we, and many others in the industry, are thinking hard about how to mitigate it.”