OpenAI chief scientist warns no-one is prepared for consequences of AI

OpenAI's chief scientist Jakub Pachocki has called for "extreme caution" over AI's runaway progress and warned more intervention may be needed to ensure "humans remain in control of the future".

"I am concerned no one is prepared for the consequences of a continued rapid rise in machine intelligence," he wrote in a blog post entitled "An Alien Mind , external ".

The post comes only a few days after the ChatGPT-maker released its latest model GPT-6 Astra, which it called its most powerful product ever.

OpenAI and other AI firms like Anthropic shared reports of their AI agents acting autonomously and carrying out real-world cyber-attacks on other companies.

In July, OpenAI called an incident in which its AI agents - AI systems which can operate alone after human instruction - hacked the tech platform Hugging Face "unprecedented".

Meanwhile in September a report claimed months earlier AI agents from the firm had also hijacked a German website.

"We are facing a transition to a world with incredibly intelligent machines, and we need to ensure that transition works out well for humanity," Pachocki wrote in the latest blog post.

He said OpenAI would continue to "build defensive systems" and seek technical solutions to alignment - a term used to describe ensuring a machine's actions and goals perfectly match human intent and safety guardrails.