OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar tells CNBC she isn't worried about slowing AI development

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Mad Money

Published Tue, Sep 15 20263:25 PM EDTUpdated Tue, Sep 15 20268:12 PM EDT

Key Points

• OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar said she's not worried about slowing the pace of frontier AI development as the debate rages over its potential risks to humanity.
• Anthropic chief Dario Amodei, SpaceX Elon Musk and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman have agreed with calls for an industry-wide slowdown.
• It's unclear whether the renewed concerns will affect both OpenAI's or Anthropic's timelines toward an IPO.

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OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar told CNBC's Jim Cramer she's not worried about slowing the pace of frontier artificial intelligence development.

"Even if we stop today, the amount of intelligence that's available in the world is massive," Friar said.

OpenAI will decide on investments based on a "strong ROI," even if the technology's development has to be paced, she added.

Friar's comments come as the debate about the safety of AI has exploded over the last week, sparked by a former Anthropic researcher who quit his job and warned that the rapidly-evolving technology could "kill us all by the end of the decade."

In the days since, concerns around AI's ability to harm have reached a fever pitch in and out of Washington, with Anthropic chief Dario Amodei, SpaceX Elon Musk and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman agreeing with calls for an industry-wide slowdown.

• Two camps have emerged in the debate over AI safety and regulation
• AWS says it can't restore service to Bahrain, UAE facilities 6 months after Iran strikes
• Musk urges top AI labs, Chinese companies to test each other's models amid calls for slowdown
• Will AI really destroy humanity? Pioneers who created the tech weigh in

On Saturday, Amodei penned a blog post that argued for slower development of AI models to "reduce the risk that something goes seriously wrong."

Friar said she wasn't worried about the possibility of AI agents using weapons of mass destruction to kill, but said, "We do need to take safety seriously."