MIT President Sally Kornbluth And OpenAI CEO Sam Altman Discuss The Future Of AI

The conversation in Kresge Auditorium touched on the promise and perils of the rapidly evolving technology.

How is the field of artificial intelligence (AI) evolving and what does it mean for the future of work, education, and humanity? MIT President Sally Kornbluth and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman covered all that and more in a wide-ranging discussion on MIT’s campus May 2.

The success of OpenAI’s ChatGPT large language models has helped spur a wave of investment and innovation in the field of artificial intelligence. ChatGPT-3.5 became the fastest-growing consumer software application in history after its release at the end of 2022, with hundreds of millions of people using the tool. Since then, OpenAI has also demonstrated AI-driven image-, audio-, and video-generation products and partnered with Microsoft.

The event, which took place in a packed Kresge Auditorium, captured the excitement of the moment around AI, with an eye toward what’s next.

“I think most of us remember the first time we saw ChatGPT and were like, ‘Oh my god, that is so cool!’” Kornbluth said. “Now we’re trying to figure out what the next generation of all this is going to be.”

For his part, Altman welcomes the high expectations around his company and the field of artificial intelligence more broadly.

“I think it’s awesome that for two weeks, everybody was freaking out about ChatGPT-4, and then by the third week, everyone was like, ‘Come on, where’s GPT-5?’” Altman said. “I think that says something legitimately great about human expectation and striving and why we all have to [be working to] make things better.”