OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and other AI experts have warned that the technology could cause humanity’s extinction. Credit: Lightspring/Shutterstock.

OpenAI has formed a new team to minimise the risks posed by artificial intelligence (AI) as the technology continues to improve.

Called Preparedness, the team will monitor, predict, and try to protect against “catastrophic risks” such as nuclear threats, said ChatGPT creator OpenAI in a blog post.

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The team will also work to counter other dangers such as autonomous duplication and adaptation (ARA), cybersecurity, chemical, biological, and radioactive attacks, as well as targeted persuasion.

MIT’s Center for Deployable Machine Learning director Aleksander Madry will lead the Preparedness team.

OpenAI said: “We believe that frontier AI models, which will exceed the capabilities currently present in the most advanced existing models, have the potential to benefit all of humanity. But they also pose increasingly severe risks.”

The Preparedness team will also develop and maintain a risk-informed development policy (RDP).

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The RDP aims to lay out OpenAI’s approach to developing protective measures, conduct thorough evaluations and monitoring of frontier AI model capabilities, and set up a governance framework for supervision and accountability throughout the development process.

OpenAI said: “The RDP is meant to complement and extend our existing risk mitigation work, which contributes to the safety and alignment of new, highly capable systems, both before and after deployment.”

In May 2023, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, along with other AI experts, warned that the technology could cause humanity’s extinction.

A group of leading CEOs, engineers and researchers have released a 22-word-statement that read: “Mitigating the risk of extinction from artificial intelligence should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war.”