OpenAI CEO says world 'should accept some bad things happening' for AI benefits

Investors looking to capitalize on the artificial intelligence boom may want to look beyond the technology itself and toward the infrastructure needed to power it, according to wealth adviser Ryan Lynch.

Lynch, senior vice president and wealth adviser at Zelnick Dorfman Private Wealth, told FOX Business that his firm remains bullish on semiconductor stocks but also sees opportunities in the massive infrastructure buildout needed to support AI data centers.

“To get all of this stuff started, you really need to build the infrastructure and the groundwork first,” Lynch said.

The growing power demands of AI models will require significant improvements to the U.S. electrical grid, Lynch said, along with backup power to keep data centers operating without disruptions.

He pointed to Generac and Eaton as two stocks his firm owns and favors as part of that buildout.

“They’re at the core of this infrastructure buildout that, without them, you know, it’s hard to keep the lights on in these data centers,” Lynch said.

Lynch also sees nuclear power playing a major role as AI drives demand for electricity.

“Nuclear to me is the most important next phase of this on the energy side,” he said, arguing that continued investment and government support will be important as the technology expands.

“If we want this technology to be built out and not crush our grid in the short term, we think nuclear is really a great place to start,” Lynch said.

The White House confirmed to FOX Business on Monday that a new federal task force will have 120 days to examine the risks and opportunities posed by artificial intelligence and determine how the government should respond.

The Wall Street Journal first reported details of the task force, known as the “Super Intelligence Force,” which will be chaired by Director of National Intelligence Jay Clayton.

“The president asked that a group be put together that was going to ensure exactly what he said,” Clayton told the Journal, that “we stay the leaders in superintelligence, and that the interests of the American people are put first.”

President Donald Trump announced the formation of the Super Intelligence Force on Sunday, saying it would coordinate federal efforts aimed at keeping the United States at the forefront of the rapidly developing technology.

Clayton said the task force will examine existing laws and potential actions Congress could take while working with the AI industry to identify emerging risks and opportunities.

Its charter also calls for developing plans to respond to AI-enabled threats while avoiding regulations that could stifle innovation and competition, according to the Journal.

The group will review how the government is notified about AI-related breaches, hacks, jailbreaks and other incidents and recommend ways to improve the federal response under existing authorities.

“The risk of not being first is high,” Clayton told the Journal. “Not being first increases the identified, and unidentified, risks, particularly from our adversaries. Being first will better enable us to address those risks on behalf of the American people.”

Fox Business’ Nicole McManus contributed to this report.

OpenAI is expanding advertising on ChatGPT with a new visual format designed to showcase products and services as the artificial intelligence giant looks to reach customers beyond its subscription business.

The company said the new ads will initially be tested during image generation in ChatGPT, allowing advertisers to display images showing products, how they are used or experiences associated with them.

Testing is expected to begin later this month in the U.S. with an initial group of advertisers. OpenAI said the ads will be clearly labeled and kept separate from images generated by ChatGPT.

The expansion comes as OpenAI increasingly looks to advertising as another source of revenue from ChatGPT, which the company says reaches 1.2 billion people each week.

Advertising “allows us to serve a much larger market than subscriptions alone, while giving businesses a new way to reach people as they explore ideas, make decisions and discover products and services,” OpenAI said.

The company is also expanding tools that allow advertisers to measure whether ChatGPT ads lead to clicks, purchases and other conversions, including through partnerships with outside advertising and analytics firms.

OpenAI said it is also working with independent companies to evaluate whether ads are appearing in environments considered appropriate for particular brands.

The company maintained that advertising does not influence ChatGPT’s answers and said user conversations remain private from advertisers.

A multibillion-dollar San Francisco company is paying an army of freelancers to use their real-world expertise to help train artificial intelligence models.

Mercor has assembled more than 100,000 freelancers who can be tapped when major AI companies want models such as ChatGPT or Claude to improve their capabilities in fields ranging from finance and architecture to medicine and music, according to a “60 Minutes” report.

“Everything that humans want AI to be able to do — we wanna teach it how to do that,” 23-year-old Mercor co-founder and CEO Brendan Foody told CBS News’ Jon Wertheim.

The company’s trainers include professionals such as physicians, winemakers and music producers. Dr. Melania Poonacha told “60 Minutes” that one project involved training AI to accurately interpret laboratory results, while music producer Robbie Hiser described evaluating different versions of song lyrics and providing feedback.

The work can pay anywhere from $20 to $200 an hour, according to the report, though more than a dozen current and former Mercor trainers interviewed by the program offered mixed accounts of the work. Some said projects and hours could be unpredictable.

Foody acknowledged that the hours can be “more erratic,” describing the jobs as generally part-time work and saying the company is transparent with experts about the arrangement.

The work also raises a larger question: Are professionals helping build technology that could eventually replace some of what they do?

Foody argued AI will instead change the nature of human work.

“It might not necessarily be that repetitive task that people have done in the past, but there’s still so many other things that people could be able to do,” Foody said. “And so I think that evolution is natural.”

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said artificial intelligence should remain widely available, arguing the technology's benefits are worth accepting some risks. 

In an interview with Politico's Decoded newsletter, Altman said he believes "the world should accept some bad things happening for the benefits of this technology and people having the agency." 

Altman also said OpenAI and rival Anthropic have significantly different views on AI regulation. While he said he understands the argument that AI could become so "powerful" and "dangerous" that it should be controlled by a single company, he disagrees with that approach. 

"I disagree, but I understand the perspective of people who are like, 'This technology is going to get so powerful, and it's so dangerous, that a single lab in San Francisco should have it and make sure nothing bad happens, and kind of figure out how to dole out the benefits,'" Altman said. 

Calling that "a completely unacceptable trade-off," Altman said OpenAI instead supports a "lighter-touch regulatory approach." 

"I wouldn't take a trade of saying, 'We'll make sure there's no major hacks, there's no misuse of this technology, there's zero scams, there's zero all the other bad things that will happen,'" he said. "Because I think people will do tremendously — orders of magnitude more — good stuff than bad stuff." 

Reuters contributed to this report.