Our approach to AI safety

OpenAI is committed to keeping powerful AI safe and broadly beneficial⁠. We know our AI tools provide many benefits to people today. Our users around the world have told us that ChatGPT helps to increase their productivity, enhance their creativity, and offer tailored learning experiences. We also recognize that, like any technology, these tools come with real risks—so we work to ensure safety is built into our system at all levels.

Building increasingly safe AI systems

Prior to releasing any new system we conduct rigorous testing, engage external experts for feedback, work to improve the model's behavior with techniques like reinforcement learning with human feedback, and build broad safety and monitoring systems.

For example, after our latest model, GPT‑4, finished training, we spent more than 6 months working across the organization to make it safer and more aligned prior to releasing it publicly.

We believe that powerful AI systems should be subject to rigorous safety evaluations. Regulation is needed to ensure that such practices are adopted, and we actively engage with governments on the best form such regulation could take.

Learning from real-world use to improve safeguards

We work hard to prevent foreseeable risks before deployment, however, there is a limit to what we can learn in a lab⁠. Despite extensive research and testing, we cannot predict all of the beneficial ways people will use our technology⁠, nor all the ways people will abuse it. That’s why we believe that learning from real-world use is a critical component of creating and releasing increasingly safe AI systems over time.

We cautiously and gradually release new AI systems—with substantial safeguards in place—to a steadily broadening group of people and make continuous improvements based on the lessons we learn.