Sam Altman before the UN Security Council: Warning about concentration of AI power

Dusseldorf. Sam Altman sits in a place where war and peace are actually decided. Here, in the United Nations Security Council in New York, states can decide on sanctions and authorize military force. But this time it is not a state leader sitting here, but the head of the software company OpenAI.

Altman sight-reads. He rarely raises his eyes from the manuscript to the assembled ministers and diplomats. In front of him, the wooden council table in a horseshoe runs through the hall. On the wall, a monumental painting shows how people overcome war and imprisonment. A phoenix rises from the ashes. In Altman's story, the Phoenix could crash again.

Altman talks about a technology that could create wealth but also slip away from human control. And he warns that too much power is concentrated in too few hands.

The head of OpenAI is someone who has a lot of power in this new world. It's about technological power. But also about financial power. The primacy of state power on which the United Nations was founded has never been more in question than it is today.