OpenAI’s pivot to porn is problematic – but lucrative
For all its promise to transform industries and uplift civilisation, the easiest way to commercialise artificial intelligence is still through the basest human instincts
WHEN you are building artificial intelligence (AI) to benefit humanity, you might have to compromise. AI is expensive, so you raise billions of dollars from investors such as Microsoft, Nvidia and the United Arab Emirates.
As you strive to build super-intelligent computers that will cure cancer, you also need to make money for your backers. So, after pitching your powerful chatbot technology to businesses, who struggle to make it useful, your next option may be monetising your enormous user base of 800 million weekly visitors – with a sex bot.
That is the ignoble trajectory of OpenAI under Sam Altman, who has made a career of justifying opportunistic business moves – such as inflating the AI bubble with circular dealmaking or releasing a TikTok clone – with the promise that his tech will eventually, one day, solve intractable human problems.
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