ChatGPT CEO Sam Altman is 'surprised' by how much people blindly trust it: 'AI hallucinates'

Are you among those who believe the AI boom to be a plague descending humanity into an irreversible descent? Or is the icon pinned on the homepage of your phone and arguably your most used app?

Either way, you'll want to read this one — either for the satisfaction a good old 'I told you so!' will get you, or because this might be the PSA you NEED. And it comes straight from the horse's mouth.

ChatGPT CEO Sam Altman spoke at the OpenAI Podcast earlier this month, and in no uncertain words, expressed genuine surprise at how much of their life people had tied into being dependent on the AI messenger.

"People have a very high degree of trust in ChatGPT, which is interesting, because AI hallucinates. It should be the tech that you don't trust that much."

That being said, it's been a trial and error process for the CEO himself too. Sharing a personal anecdote, Sam revealed how when he became a new parent, he found himself a little too logistically woven into the ChatGPT nexus as he made sense of his new role:

"It was always on, helping me decide everything from nap routines to what to do about diaper rash."

But he added that he had to remind himself that AI doesn’t always get things right — a point all users should take note of.

As a parting shot, Sam articulated how dependence on AI must be balanced with real-world oversight to ensure that power remains vested in humans:

"We need societal guardrails. We're at the start of something powerful, and if we're not careful, trust will outpace reliability."

Using tools like ChatGPT to assist with decision-making is perfectly fine. However, it's best to treat its responses as suggestions rather than final truth. Just because it sounds human doesn't make it human.

Dr. Melissa Tran, an AI ethicist at the University of Toronto, captures the dilemma well:

"It speaks like a confident human. That alone makes people feel like it knows what it's talking about even when it doesn't."