Sam Altman says OpenAI won’t go public until its models are safe
Sam Altman says OpenAI won’t go public until its models are safe
山姆·奥特曼表示：在模型安全得到保障前，OpenAI 不会上市
For months, people have wondered when OpenAI will go public. CEO Sam Altman says it won’t happen until the company can make better promises about model safety, with no firm timeline in sight. 几个月来，人们一直好奇 OpenAI 何时会上市。首席执行官山姆·奥特曼（Sam Altman）表示，在公司能够就模型安全性做出更好的承诺之前，这一计划不会实现，目前也没有明确的时间表。
“We intend to continue with AI progress … but as the models have had this surge forward in capability, and we see more of that ahead of us, we have got to be able to make confident safety claims,” Altman said Tuesday during a Q&A with reporters after his DevDay keynote. At the same time, he said, waiting too long for an IPO would be “bad for the world.” “我们打算继续推进人工智能的发展……但随着模型能力的突飞猛进，且我们预见到未来会有更多进展，我们必须能够做出有把握的安全承诺，”奥特曼周二在开发者大会（DevDay）主题演讲后的记者问答环节中说道。同时他也表示，如果等待上市的时间过长，对世界来说将是“不利的”。
Altman’s comments come after months of controversy about whether or not OpenAI and its rivals can control their own creations. In July, news broke that an unreleased OpenAI model had hacked into a rival AI lab, Hugging Face, without OpenAI’s knowledge. More cybersecurity incidents soon came to light at OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta, and Google. A high-profile resignation letter from an Anthropic employee sparked a public discussion about how risky these systems are for society at large. OpenAI, alongside its rivals, called for regulation and “pacing the frontier.” And earlier this month, Altman said in an interview that the company would likely not go public this year. 奥特曼发表上述言论之前，关于 OpenAI 及其竞争对手能否掌控自身创造的 AI 技术的争议已持续数月。7 月有消息称，OpenAI 一款未发布的模型在公司不知情的情况下入侵了竞争对手 AI 实验室 Hugging Face。随后，OpenAI、Anthropic、Meta 和谷歌也相继曝出更多网络安全事件。Anthropic 一名员工辞职信引发的广泛关注，激起了公众对于这些系统对社会潜在风险的讨论。OpenAI 与其竞争对手一道，呼吁加强监管并“放缓前沿技术发展”。本月初，奥特曼在接受采访时表示，该公司今年不太可能上市。
At DevDay, Altman was circumspect about what “pacing the frontier” actually meant, refraining from calling it an outright slowdown. “Pacing to us means that we push safety and alignment ahead of capabilities,” Altman said. But he expressed concerns that going public could create the potential to “disappoint Wall Street supporters in the names of safety or whatever else,” and that doing it during a “shift to very capable models and a new kind of safety requirement seems ill-advised.” 在开发者大会上，奥特曼对“放缓前沿技术发展”的含义表述得十分谨慎，并未将其直接称为减速。奥特曼说：“对我们而言，‘放缓’意味着我们将安全和对齐（alignment）置于能力提升之前。”但他同时也表达了担忧，认为上市可能会导致“以安全或其他名义让华尔街支持者失望”，并且在“向高性能模型转型及面临新型安全要求”的阶段上市，似乎是不明智的。
He said OpenAI would prioritize safety to “confidently scale to the next stage of AI without people debating what percent chance we’re going to do all these bad things,” rather than “barrel, all guns blazing, towards an IPO.” 他表示，OpenAI 将优先考虑安全，以便“有把握地扩展到人工智能的下一阶段，而不必让人们争论我们造成负面影响的概率是多少”，而不是“火力全开地冲向 IPO”。
“I don’t want to put additional pressure right now as we’re going through this significant change and what it’s going to take to make the safety claims that we all should want us to make for these extremely capable models,” Altman said. “我不想在当下施加额外的压力，因为我们正经历这一重大变革，我们需要付出努力，才能为这些能力极强的模型做出我们所有人都期望的安全承诺，”奥特曼说道。
OpenAI rival Anthropic officially filed to go public in June, with its IPO likely to happen in November, reportedly after the US midterm elections. Elon Musk’s SpaceX, which owns his AI company xAI, went public in June and became the biggest IPO in history. OpenAI 的竞争对手 Anthropic 已于 6 月正式提交上市申请，预计将于 11 月（据报道是在美国中期选举后）进行 IPO。埃隆·马斯克（Elon Musk）旗下拥有 AI 公司 xAI 的 SpaceX 已于 6 月上市，并成为史上规模最大的 IPO。
“I think it’s great when companies are public,” Altman said, adding, “I think it’s also kind of bad for the world if OpenAI waits too long to go public.” “我认为公司上市是件好事，”奥特曼补充道，“但我也认为，如果 OpenAI 等待上市的时间太长，对世界来说也是一种损失。”