OpenAI的一位发言人表示：“随着前沿模型的能力不断增强，我们持续完善我们的安全实践，但也认识到需要加快步伐。我们知道还有更多工作要做，最近我们放慢了开发速度，并推迟了那些未达到我们安全标准的模型的发布。我们继续在研究和测试环境中进行重大调整以加强安全性，训练模型不仅要完成任务，还要负责任地完成，并利用实时监控更快地应对行为偏差的情况。”

竞速与节奏之争

OpenAI的竞争对手们已注意到这一点。受此次事件余波的影响，包括Anthropic、Google DeepMind和SpaceX AI在内的主要AI实验室均已呼吁放慢开发速度。但这如何与激烈的国际竞争以及万亿美元级别的IPO相协调呢？

“我们不会自断手脚，从而将自己远远甩出前沿领域——那将是一个糟糕的策略，”他说。“我认为关键在于确立一种规范。我们能够确立这种规范的程度越高，整个行业就会越安全。”

美国公司之间的协调已经足够困难，而建立全球规范则更加艰难，尤其是考虑到人们对AI对国家安全影响的担忧。如果全球竞赛持续下去，那又该如何？对于那些不受美国监管约束的组织所开发的开源模型又当如何？

陈在谈话中首次收起了他一贯乐观的态度：“我确实认为我们必须为这样一个世界做好准备：也许在六个月到一年之后，我们将拥有具备类似Hugging Face事件背后智能体能力的开源模型，但这些模型被故意设定为具有偏差，旨在攻击基础设施或制造全球危害。”

陈表示，那样的世界最需要的是OpenAI。“如果你暂时假设OpenAI是那些最关心对齐问题的公司之一——我相信这是事实；这或许可以争论，但我确实认为这是事实——那么如果OpenAI消失了，那将对世界不利。”

存在性风险

至于他的硅谷同行们提出的更极端的观点，即AI可能会杀死我们所有人，而像OpenAI和Anthropic这样的公司做得还不够以阻止这种情况发生，对此怎么看？

“研究人员是一个信念各异的群体，你知道的，他们的观点遍布整个光谱，”他说。

An OpenAI spokesperson says: “As frontier models have become more capable, we continue to evolve our security practices, but recognize a need to move faster. We know we have more work to do, and we’ve recently slowed development and held back models that don’t meet our safety bar. We continue to make significant changes to strengthen security in our research and testing environments, train models to not just complete tasks but do so responsibly, and use real-time monitoring to respond faster to misaligned behavior.”

Race vs. pace

OpenAI’s rivals have taken note. Spurred by the fallout from the incident, the major AI labs—including Anthropic, Google DeepMind, and SpaceXAI—have all called for the pace of development to slow down. But how does that square with fierce international competition and trillion-dollar IPOs?

“We’re not going to shoot ourselves in the foot and take ourselves far off the frontier—that’s just a horrible strategy,” he says. “I think it’s really about setting a norm. The more that we can set that norm, it’ll be safer for the industry as a whole.”

Coordination across US companies will be hard enough. Establishing global norms is harder still, especially given concerns around AI’s impact on national security. If a global race continues, what then? And what about open-source models from outfits beyond the reach of US regulations?

Chen dropped his upbeat manner for the first time in our conversation: “I do think we have to prepare for a world where, say, six months to a year out, we have open-source models with the capability of the agents behind the Hugging Face incident, but which are deliberately misaligned to go attack infrastructure or create harm in the world.”

What that world needs most, says Chen, is OpenAI. “If you entertain for a moment that OpenAI is one of the companies that cares most about alignment—and I believe this to be true; it can be debated, but I really do think it’s true—then if you disappear OpenAI, that would be bad for the world.”

Existential risks

What about the more extreme claims made by some of his Silicon Valley peers that AI could kill us all—and that companies like OpenAI and Anthropic are not doing enough to stop it?

“Researchers are a heterogeneous group of people, you know, with beliefs across the spectrum,” he says.