TechCapsules

AI-summarised brief · reviewed before publication

Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, faced a challenging interview at the New York Times' "Hard Fork" podcast, hosted by journalists Kevin Roose and Casey Newton. The podcast, which also featured OpenAI's chief operating officer Brad Lightcap as a guest, was testy from the start. Almost immediately, Altman attacked the New York Times' copyright lawsuit against OpenAI, saying "Are you going to talk about where you sue us because you don't like user privacy?" The audience found it amusing, but it was unclear what he meant unless they were familiar with the lawsuit. Altman's comment seemed to be a reference to OpenAI's argument in the lawsuit that a judge's order, which requires OpenAI to allow the New York Times to access its chat logs as evidence of infringement, is an attempt to violate user privacy. However, Roose emphasized that neither he nor Newton are involved in the lawsuit and have, in fact, been supporters of AI technology in recent years. Despite this, Altman refused to back down, stating that the New York Times is taking a position that OpenAI should have to preserve user logs even in private mode, and even if users have asked for them to be deleted. Roose fired back at Altman, saying "Well, thank you for your views, and I'll just say it must be really hard when someone does something with your data you don't want them to." This response from Roose elicited a loud reaction from the audience. It is worth noting that Altman's initial comment did get a few laughs from the audience, but Roose's response was met with a much stronger reaction.