His trip comes in the backdrop of governments across the world, including India, attempting to build a case for the regulation of AI-based tools, while raising questions about their impact on morality, ethics, data security and jobs.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman at an event organised by The Economic Times in New Delhi
Altman has his ideas about how AI regulations should evolve. Addressing an audience of over 150 top leaders from the tech, startup and policy ecosystems at ‘ET Conversations’ in New Delhi on Wednesday, he underscored that smaller companies should not be regulated.
A world tour: Over the last month, Altman has met heads of states and governments of several countries. The latest halt on his whistlestop tour was India, where he met Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday. Prior to that he met Israel President Isaac Herzog, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, French President Emmanuel Macron, and Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, among other government leaders.
What they said: “Developing talents and technologies in France, acting for regulation at the French, European and global levels, these are our priorities in terms of artificial intelligence,” Macron said following his meeting with Altman in May.
“AI can fuel huge progress and improve our lives. But we must mitigate risks and build trust. To match the speed of tech development, AI firms need to play their part,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said.
OpenAI’s pitch: Altman underscored the need for “nuance in the conversation” about regulating AI, saying that smaller companies should not be regulated.
“We’ve met with heads of state in many, many countries on this trip. And I have been really pleasantly surprised every single time about the nuance of not slowing down innovation, all the positive economic benefits and everything else and realising that if this keeps going, it can get somewhere that does require global action,” he said.
When asked by Times Internet vice chairman Satyan Gajwani about what he would do if he were a regulator overseeing technology and AI, he said: “I would say, you know, we have the G20 coming up, India can play like a huge role here in the global conversation about what this sort of international regulatory thing might look like. And we are going to really focus on that between now and September and make sure we prioritise that.”
India’s stance: The Indian government’s approach to any regulation of AI will be through the prism of “user harm or derived user harm through any technology”, Minister of State Rajeev Chandrasekhar said on Friday.
“There has been an increase in toxicity and criminality on the internet. We won’t let attempts to harm digital citizens succeed. Either AI and related programmes and platforms will mitigate user harm or they will not be allowed to operate in India,” the minister added.
Early setbacks: In April, Italy’s data protection authority had banned ChatGPT temporarily and launched a probe into the AI tool over alleged privacy law violations. The ban was lifted around a month later, after the company issued clarifications on some of the concerns raised by the authority.
Late last month, Altman reportedly said in London that OpenAI will try to comply with the European Union’s proposed AI Act, but was also prepared to “cease operating” in Europe if the company was unable to do so.
However, less than two days after commenting on potentially leaving Europe, Altman wrote in a tweet: “very productive week of conversations in europe about how to best regulate AI! we are excited to continue to operate here and of course have no plans to leave”.
South Korean conglomerate Samsung Electronics also, in May, banned the use of generative AI tools like ChatGPT by its employees after discovering that its staff uploaded sensitive code to the platform. After wrapping up his India visit, Altman has landed in South Korea for the next leg of his tour.
ET Conversations with Sam Altman
Times Internet vice chairman Satyan Gajwani (left) in conversation with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman during an event organised by The Economic Times in New Delhi
AI effect: We’ll get way wealthier and witness a productivity boom, says Sam Altman | Altman spoke to Times Internet vice chairman Satyan Gajwani in a fireside chat that covered a vast range of topics, from their days at Stanford, through the birth of the company that gave the world ChatGPT, to the future of artificial intelligence and the impact of the technology.
Read full interview here.
(From left) Samidha Sharma, editor, ETtech, Sam Altman, CEO, OpenAI, Sandhini Agarwal, policy team, OpenAI
In a discussion moderated by ET’s Samidha Sharma, Altman also took a range of questions from a highly-engaged audience which included India’s top businessmen and entrepreneurs.
Read the full Q&A session here.
Regulation? AI, says OpenAI CEO Sam Altman: Major companies operating in the artificial intelligence (AI) space including OpenAI should be regulated but not smaller ones and startups, said Altman. “We have explicitly said there should be no regulations on smaller companies or on the current open source models—it’s important to let that flourish,” he said.
AI systems should be tools to make us better, treat each other better: During the Q&A session, a question on love of the AI kind was brought up by Samir Jain of The Times of India Group: Will AI reach a level of ‘sophistication’ and mimicry capable of ‘greater love than mother and child, man and wife’?
“I hope we don’t all fall in love with robots,” Altman replied on behalf of humanity, “That would be deeply depressing. What I hope happens is we are all the best versions of ourselves, figure out how to be better.”
OpenAI’s Sam Altman disagrees with Elon Musk on pausing AI research: Altman has been vocally supportive of regulation in the AI space. Asked about Tesla cofounder and Twitter boss Elon Musk’s stance on wanting to halt AI research, Altman said he would prefer external audits and red teaming safety tests (simulating cyberattacks to test security) when it comes to keeping the technology in check.
ETtech Exclusives
After online payments, digital loans, now P2P lending under RBI lens: The Reserve Bank of India is looking closely at platforms that facilitate direct, or peer-to-peer (P2P), lending between individuals. The central bank has sent detailed questions to registered P2P lending startups between March and April this year, three people in the know told ET.
BharatPe, Jupiter and Cred are among the major consumer-focussed applications which work closely with NBFC P2P platforms. P2P startups such as Liquiloans and LenDenClub have built partnerships with multiple consumer-focused platforms.
EV, AI, semicon favourites for VCs amid sluggish startup funding: Venture capital funds like Lightspeed India, Matrix Partners India, Athera Venture Partners and Accel Partners are increasingly deploying early-stage capital in emerging sectors such as electric mobility, artificial intelligence, deep tech, climate-tech and semiconductors.
Investments in deep tech (including AI startups) climate tech and semiconductors have totalled $1.58 billion in 2023 so far, according to data from Tracxn.
Gaming startups team up for two regulatory bodies; to discuss with govt by end of week: Gaming startups and companies have come together to propose at least two self-regulatory bodies (SRB), the details of which will be submitted to the Centre by the end of this week, sources in the know of the development told ET.
ETtech Interviews
Shailendra Singh, managing director, Peak XV Partners
Became too complex to run a global investment biz: Peak XV’s Shailendra Singh on Sequoia split | Sequoia Capital, the marquee Silicon Valley investor in early-stage companies, broke away from its India and China partnerships on June 7. Sequoia India & Southeast Asia has been rebranded Peak XV Partners.
Shailendra Singh, managing director of the rebranded Peak XV Partners, told ET about the way forward for the newly independent fund, which has $2.5 billion in dry powder ready to be deployed.
Invested more than $2 billion in Neu; app revamp has paid off: Tata Digital CEO | Tata Sons has invested more than $2 billion in super app Tata Neu, which has seen a surge in business after being reworked in time for the just-concluded Indian Premier League (IPL), Tata Digital CEO Pratik Pal told ET in an interview.
I was brought in to transform, take tough decisions: Wipro CEO Thierry Delaporte | CEO Thierry Delaporte has adopted an aggressive acquisition strategy that has seen Wipro acquire a dozen companies, shelling out over $2.3 billion in the last three years. In an exclusive interview with ET, he said he had been appointed with the mandate to “transform and take tough decisions”.
ET Ecommerce Index
We’ve launched three indices – ET Ecommerce, ET Ecommerce Profitable, and ET Ecommerce Non-Profitable – to track the performance of recently listed tech firms. Here’s how they’ve fared so far.
Byju’s woes
Byju’s misses $40 million loan payment: Education startup Byju’s has elected not to make further payments on a $1.2 billion loan after a dispute with lenders, escalating a conflict that could jeopardise the future of one of India’s highest-flying startups.
Byju’s sued its lender Redwood, an American investment management firm, and its related entities in the New York Supreme Court for accelerating the repayment of the Term Loan B (TLB).
Lenders hit back, call Byju’s lawsuit ‘meritless’: In a statement, lenders said that Byju’s lawsuit was “an effort to avoid complying with its obligations, including making contractually required payments”.
Byju’s to lay off more staff in fresh cost-cutting drive: Byju’s is expected to let go of more staffers as it embarks on another cost-cutting exercise to streamline operations further, people in the know said.
Byju’s weighs IPO of its test prep subsidiary Aakash by mid-2024: Byju’s plans to launch the initial public offering (IPO) of its test-prep subsidiary Aakash Education Services in mid-2024. In a statement, the company said its board had cleared the IPO proposal and that merchant bankers will be appointed soon.
Fintech corner
RBI issues guidelines for default loss guarantee, provides breather to fintechs: The Reserve Bank of India has introduced a cap of 5% on the first loan default guarantee (FLDG) that is provided by fintechs to their lending partners.
RBI has walked a tightrope with 5% cap on FLDG: On one hand, the guidelines around FLDG arrangements between lenders and unregulated players have reopened major business opportunities for fintechs; on the other, a 5% cap ensures that overall risks in the sector will be contained.
Thanks to ecommerce, India’s internet economy to reach $1 trillion in 8 years: India’s internet economy is poised to grow to $1 trillion over the next eight years, with the growth in ecommerce leading this expansion in gross merchandise value (GMV), Google, Bain & Co and Temasek said in a report.
Startup Street
Google Billing Policy | Madras HC extends interim relief to startups: The Madras HC has extended the interim injunction to all the petitions filed in the Google Play billing matter, directing Google not to delist any of them from Play Store. ET had reported that Unacademy, Kuku FM, TrulyMadly and QuackQuack had moved the court.
ONDC launches B2B ecommerce, SignCatch and Rapidor join network: The new foray of ONDC will enable micro, small and medium enterprises to utilise the network to conduct B2B transactions.
‘2026 revenue forecast for SaaS startups plunges 74% to $26 billion’: Global management consulting and strategy advisory firm Zinnov and venture capital firm Chiratae Ventures marked down 2026 revenue projections of the Indian software-as-a-service (Saas) startups from $100 billion to $26 billion in its latest annual report on the space.
ETtech Deep Dives
A global crisis drives opportunities for Indian IT industry: Top IT CEOs said that the current global uncertainty spells opportunity. Executives are of the view that demand will rise through the current fiscal year as enterprises will double down on value realisation with their existing providers with a higher margin for offshoring contracts.
Why cloud kitchen Rebel Foods is going back offline to build food courts: As the cloud kitchen industry undergoes a course correction, the only unicorn in the space, Rebel Foods, is slowly expanding its multi-brand food courts in the offline space.
ETtech Deals Digest
New-age companies mopped up just $86 million this week across 17 rounds, recording a sharp fall of 58% from the same period last year, according to data provided by market research firm Tracxn.
Sequentially, funding activity for Indian startups plunged 85%, compared to the $571 million raised across 59 rounds last week.
(Graphics & illustrations by Rahul Awasthi)
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