OpenAI CEO Sam Altman warns of an AI ‘fraud crisis'
'A thing that terrifies me is apparently there are still some financial institutions that will accept a voice print as authentication for you to move a lot of money or do something else — you say a challenge phrase, and they just do it,' Altman said. 'That is a crazy thing to still be doing… AI has fully defeated most of the ways that people authenticate currently, other than passwords.'
The comments were part of his wide-ranging interview about the economic and societal impacts of AI at the Federal Reserve on Tuesday. He also told the audience, which included, representatives of large US financial institutions, about the role he expects AI to play in the economy.
His appearance comes as the White House is expected to release its 'AI Action Plan' in the coming days, a policy document to outline its approach to regulating the technology and promoting America's dominance in the AI space.
OpenAI, which provided recommendations for the plan, has ramped up its presence on and around Capitol Hill in recent months.
On Tuesday, the company confirmed it will open its first Washington, DC, office early next year to house its approximately 30-person workforce in the city. Chan Park, OpenAI's head of global affairs for the US and Canada, will lead the new office alongside Joe Larson, who is leaving defense technology company Anduril to become OpenAI's vice president of government.
The company will use the space to host policymakers, preview new technology, and provide AI trainings, for example, to teachers and government officials. It will also house research into AI's economic impact and how to improve access to the technology.
Despite Altman's warnings about the technology's risks, OpenAI has urged the Trump administration to avoid regulation it says could hamper tech companies' ability to compete with foreign AI innovations. Earlier this month, the US Senate voted to strike a controversial provision from Trump's agenda bill that would have prevented states from enforcing AI-related laws for 10 years.
Altman isn't alone in worrying that AI will supercharge fraud.
The FBI warned about these AI voice and video 'cloning' scams last year. Multiple parents have reported that AI voice technology was used in attempts to trick them out of money by convincing them that their children were in trouble. And earlier this month, US officials warned that someone using AI to impersonate Secretary of State Marco Rubio's voice had contacted foreign ministers, a US governor and a member of Congress.
'I am very nervous that we have an impending, significant, impending fraud crisis,' Altman said.
'Right now, it's a voice call; soon it's going be a video or FaceTime that's indistinguishable from reality,' Altman said. He warned that while his company isn't building such impersonation tools, it's a challenge the world will soon need to confront as AI continues to evolve. Altman is backing a tool called The Orb, built by Tools for Humanity, that says it will offer 'proof of human' in a world where AI makes it harder to distinguish what, and who, is real online.
Altman also explained what keeps him up at night: the idea of bad actors making and misusing AI 'superintelligence' before the rest of the world has advanced enough to defend against such an attack — for example, a US adversary using AI to target the American power grid or create a bioweapon. That comment could speak to fears within the White House and elsewhere on Capitol Hill about China outpacing US tech companies on AI.
Altman also said he worries about the prospect of humans losing control of a superintelligent AI system, or giving the technology too much decision-making power. Various tech companies, including OpenAI, are chasing AI superintelligence — and Altman has said he thinks the 2030s could bring AI intelligence far beyond what humans are capable of — but it remains unclear how exactly they define that milestone and when, if ever, they'll reach it.
But Altman said he's not as worried as some of his peers in Silicon Valley about AI's potential impact on the workforce, after leaders such as Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei and Amazon CEO Andy Jassy have warned the technology will take jobs.
Instead, Altman believes that 'no one knows what happens next.'
'There's a lot of these really smart-sounding predictions,' he said, ''Oh, this is going to happen on this and the economy over here.' No one knows that. In my opinion, this is too complex of a system, this is too new and impactful of a technology, it's very hard to predict.'
Still, he does have some thoughts. He said that while 'entire classes of jobs will go away,' new types of work will emerge. And Altman repeated a prediction he's made previously that if the world could look forward 100 years, the workers of the future probably won't have what workers today consider 'real jobs.'
'You have everything you could possibly need. You have nothing to do,' Altman said of the future workforce. 'So, you're making up a job to play a silly status game and to fill your time and to feel useful to other people.'
The sentiment seems to be that Altman thinks we shouldn't worry about AI taking jobs because, in the future, we won't really need jobs anyway, although he didn't detail how the future AI tools would, for example, reliably argue a case in court or clean someone's teeth or construct a house.
In conjunction with Altman's speech, OpenAI released a report compiled by its chief economist, Ronnie Chatterji, outlining ChatGPT's productivity benefits for workers.
In the report, Chatterji — who joined OpenAI as its first chief economist after serving as coordinator of the CHIPS and Science Act in the Biden White House — compared AI to transformative technologies such as electricity and the transistor. He said ChatGPT now has 500 million users globally.
Among US users, 20% use ChatGPT as a 'personalized tutor' for 'learning and upskilling,' according to the report, although it didn't elaborate on what kinds of things people are learning through the service. Chatterji also noted that more than half of ChatGPT's American users are between the ages of 18 and 34, 'suggesting that there may be long-term economic benefits as they continue to use AI tools in the workplace going forward.'
Over the next year, Chatterji plans to work with economists Jason Furman and Michael Strain on a longer study of AI's impact on jobs and the US workforce. That work will take place in the new Washington, DC, office.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Los Angeles Times
18 minutes ago
- Los Angeles Times
Trump moves to lift visa restrictions for Argentina in a boost t his right-wing ally
BUENOS AIRES, Argentina — The United States and Argentina on Monday announced that they are working on a plan to allow Argentine tourists to again travel to the U.S. without a visa. It probably will take two to three years before visa-free travel becomes a reality for Argentine passport holders, but the Trump administration's move to kickstart the process marked a show of support for President Javier Milei, its staunchest ally in South America and a darling of conservatives around the world. The gesture coincided with a visit by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to Buenos Aires, the Argentine capital, for closed-door meetings with Milei and his officials. Noem signed the statement of intent alongside Security Minister Patricia Bullrich in Milei's office. Noem, on horseback at the country's sprawling Campo De Mayo army base and donning a cowboy hat and jeans, told reporters that the Trump administration would put Argentina on an 'expedited path' to enrollment in the Visa Waiver Program. Still, she cautioned that securing approval within the next year 'would be very difficult,' according to a White House pool report. The Department of Homeland Security praised Milei for reshaping Argentina's foreign policy in line with that of the U.S. 'Under President Javier Milei's leadership, Argentina is becoming an even stronger friend to the United States — more committed than ever to border security for both of our nations,' the statement said. This first step toward waiving visa requirements for Argentines, it added, 'highlights our strong partnership with Argentina and our mutual desire to promote lawful travel while deterring threats.' The department cited Argentina as having the lowest visa overstay rate in the U.S. of any Latin American country. The removal of rigorous U.S. visa requirements — particularly at a time when President Trump is tightening restrictions for foreign nationals — would offer a symbolic victory to Milei, a self-described 'anarcho-capitalist' who rose to power as a far-right outsider mimicking Trump's war-on-woke rhetoric and skillful use of social media. When he became the first world leader to visit Trump after the U.S. election, Milei pranced around Mar-a-Lago like an excited school boy. At the Conservative Political Action Committee convention in Washington in February, he gifted billionaire Elon Musk a bureaucracy-slashing chainsaw to support his DOGE campaign to eliminate government waste. When not riding the far-right, pro-Trump speaking circuit, Milei is focused on straightening out South America's second-largest economy after years of turmoil under left-wing populist rule. Through tough budget cuts and mass layoffs, Milei has succeeded in driving down Argentina's notorious double-digit inflation. The last time Argentines didn't require a visa to enter the U.S. was in the 1990s under another free-market devotee, the late former President Carlos Menem. Menem's neo-liberal reforms and pegging of the peso 1 to 1 to the U.S. dollar destroyed Argentina's industry, exacerbating poverty in what a century ago was one of the world's wealthiest countries. In the crisis that followed, the U.S. reimposed visa restrictions in 2002 as young Argentines seeking to flee misery lined up at European embassies and began to migrate illegally to the U.S. 'Argentina has had the advantage of the program before, and they're looking to get back on track and reenrolled,' Noem, who grew up on a farm in rural South Dakota, said while feeding sugar cubes to a dark brown horse named Abundance, according to the pool report. When pressed about her talks with Milei, she was short on specifics, saying they discussed security partnerships and 'the business we could be doing together.' She said she appreciated Milei's 'embrace' of Trump's policies. The Argentine presidency described Monday's preliminary agreement as 'a clear demonstration of the excellent relationship, based on trust' between Milei and Trump. After riding Abundance through the grassy fields of the army base, Noem rejoined U.S. and Argentine officials for asado — the traditional meat-centric barbecue and a national passion. She is the third member of Trump's Cabinet to meet Milei in Buenos Aires this year, after U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. More than 40 mostly European and wealthy Asian countries belong to the exclusive club that allows their citizens to travel to the U.S. without a visa for up to three months. However, border officers have the power to turn anyone away. About 20 million tourists use the program each year. Currently, Chile is the only Latin American country in the program. Overseas travel to the U.S. plunged in the early days of Trump's return to the White House as tourists, especially from Latin America, feared being caught in the administration's border crackdown. Some canceled travel plans to protest his foreign policy and anti-immigrant rhetoric. But those numbers began to rebound in April, with more than 3 million international arrivals — 8% more than a year earlier — from countries other than Mexico or Canada, according to the International Trade Administration, an agency under the U.S. Department of Commerce. In addition to clamping down on the southern border, Trump has put up additional obstacles for students, tourists and others looking to travel to the U.S. His recently passed 'big, beautiful' bill of domestic priorities calls for the enactment of a new 'visa integrity fee' of $250 to be charged in addition to the cost of the visa itself. Travel industry executives have expressed concern that the charge could drive away tourists who contribute more than $2 trillion annually and 9 million jobs to the U.S. economy, according to the International Trade Administration. About a quarter of all travelers to the U.S. come from Latin America and the Caribbean, the agency says. Arrivals from Argentina have jumped 25% this year — a bigger increase than from any other country. Debre and Goodman write for the Associated Press. Goodman reported from Medellin, Colombia.
New York Post
18 minutes ago
- New York Post
Trump admin launches probe into Duke University amid report law journal gave applicants extra points for personal statements about their race
The Trump administration announced Monday that it has launched an investigation into Duke University over allegations the school's law journal discriminated 'on the basis of race, color, and/or national origin' when selecting editors for the prestigious publication. The probe was initiated by the Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights (OCR) after the Washington Free Beacon last month reported on a packet the Duke Law Journal allegedly prepared for, and only distributed to, members of the university's law school affinity groups. The probe stems from a report that the Duke Law Journal informed members of affinity groups that would get points for discussing their race in their applications. AP The packet explained the rubric that would be used to judge 500-word personal statements prospective law journal editors are required to submit and encouraged applicants to 'discuss traditional diversity (race, gender, ethnicity etc…)' in their essays. Applicants could receive as many as 10 points for writing about how their 'membership in an underrepresented group' would 'lend itself to … promoting diverse voices,' the packet stated. Up to 5 additional points could be earned if applicants held 'a leadership position in an affinity group or have created a program to support people with diverse backgrounds.' Several sample personal statements included in the packet referenced the race of applicants in the opening sentence. '[A]s an Asian-American woman and a daughter of immigrants, I am afforded with different perspectives, experiences, and privileges,' read one sample essay shared with affinity groups. The law journal explicitly told the affinity groups not to share the packet with other students, according to the Washington Free Beacon. Duke University did not immediately respond to The Post's request for comment. In April, the Trump administration launched a similar investigation into alleged discriminatory practices at Harvard University's law journal, amid allegations the publication used 'race-based criteria' in lieu of 'merit-based standards' in its journal membership and article selection process. The Trump administration has launched dozens of investigations into universities over allegations of discrimination. REUTERS 'I am proud to partner with [Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.] to ensure that Duke commits to excellence, integrity, and lawfulness in their training of our nation's future leaders,' Education Secretary Linda McMahon said in a statement. 'If Duke illegally gives preferential treatment to law journal or medical school applicants based on those students' immutable characteristics, that is an affront not only to civil rights law, but to the meritocratic character of academic excellence,' she continued. 'Blatantly discriminatory practices that are illegal under the Constitution, antidiscrimination law, and Supreme Court precedent have become all too common in our educational institutions.' 'The Trump Administration will not allow them to continue.' Separately, McMahon and Kennedy sent a joint letter to Duke University about concerns the Trump administration has with 'race preferences in Duke's hiring, admissions, and scholarship decisions,' according to the Department of Education. The letter demands that university leaders 'review all policies and practices at Duke Health for the illegal use of race preferences, take immediate action to reform all of those that unlawfully take account of race or ethnicity to bestow benefits or advantages, and provide clear and verifiable assurances to the government that Duke's new policies will be implemented faithfully going forward — including by making all necessary organizational, leadership, and personnel changes to ensure the necessary reforms will be durable.' The missive further calls on Duke to establish a 'Merit and Civil Rights Committee' that would allow the university and the Trump administration 'to move quickly toward a mutual resolution of Duke's alleged civil rights violations.' 'We are making it clear that federal funding must support excellence — not race — in medical education, research, and training,' Kennedy said in a statement. 'Today, Secretary McMahon and I are calling on Duke to address serious allegations of racial discrimination by forming a Merit and Civil Rights Committee to work with the Federal government to uphold civil rights and merit-based standards at Duke Health,' he added. It's unclear what the investigation into Duke Health stems from. Conservative commentator Ben Shapiro alleged last year that the Duke School of Medicine lowered its admission standards as part of its diversity, equity and inclusion [DEI] efforts, a claim the university denied at the time.
New York Post
18 minutes ago
- New York Post
Stephen Colbert's lefty lunacy: Letters to the Editor — July 29, 2025
The Issue: The cancellation of Stephen Colbert's 'The Late Show,' which is known for its anti-Trump humor. Stephen Colbert's restriction — or perhaps elimination — of guests from the right, and his puerile attempt at humor is simply not funny ('The Left Show with Stephen Colbert,' July 27). His monologues are a sad camouflage for his political agenda: unwarranted hatred for President Trump. Advertisement Ron Goldman Brooklyn Jay Leno is spot on when he says that late-night TV hosts are alienating half their audiences ('Leno's 'left' jab at comics,' July 28). Fewer people are watching to begin with, and these overrated, overpaid clowns just keep delivering the same old liberal garbage. Advertisement I believe the legacy media has just as much to do with it as the buffoons. One can only hope that other hosts besides Colbert get canceled. Rob Feuerstein Staten Island Advertisement At the end of the day, Colbert became a cult leader. He claims to be a devout Catholic, but he delivers a message of hate every night. He had every right to pounce and make jokes about Trump, but when does it become mean rather than meaningful? Life is tough enough these days; why incite people rather than calm them and let them forget about the world for an hour? Dan Ricciardi Advertisement Brooklyn Rather than continuing to lose millions on late-night talk shows or canceling them entirely, the mainstream networks should emulate the Greg Gutfeld model on Fox. Place your host on a chair in a room surrounded by several like-minded panelists and let them riff on the news of the day for a half hour. No cavernous theater that can seat a thousand sycophants; no multi-member band protected by union contracts; and, most of all, no guests I've never heard of pushing movies I don't want to see, songs I don't want to hear or books I don't want to read. Jim Vespe Mamaroneck Every morning, the NY POSTcast offers a deep dive into the headlines with the Post's signature mix of politics, business, pop culture, true crime and everything in between. Subscribe here! Only Colbert found his jokes about Trump funny. It seems the only time the audience laughed was when Colbert did one of his ridiculous dances and made a fool of himself. Advertisement The critics may be right about Trump being responsible for Colbert's ouster. His audience has been silenced and Trump has had the last laugh. Nicholas Maffei Yonkers I watched Stephen Colbert's 'Late Show' for the first time in many years. He was not funny, and the show was not entertaining. Maybe that is why it is being canceled. Advertisement Gilbert Schwartz Aventura, Fla. Keep up with today's most important news Stay up on the very latest with Evening Update. Thanks for signing up! Enter your email address Please provide a valid email address. By clicking above you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Never miss a story. Check out more newsletters The Issue: Wrestling icon Hulk Hogan's death by cardiac arrest at age 71. Advertisement I admired Hulk Hogan and what he stood for ('Hulk had a 'weak heart,' ' July 26). He was a wrestler, actor and showman with a heart of gold. But more than that, Hogan was a true patriotic American, not to mention true MAGA all the way. He was a big supporter of President Trump and at the 2024 Republican National Convention in Milwaukee he ripped off his shirt in true Hulk Hogan style. He will truly be missed. My prayers go out to his family, friends and all Hulksters everywhere. Advertisement Frederick Bedell Jr. Bellerose We have lost another American icon. I am sure millions of young kids feel sadness like never before. He told all of them to always train, say your prayers and take your vitamins. He helped them to be the best they could ever be. I am positive there is a gym in heaven for him. He was a true hero. Kim Cody Whitestone Want to weigh in on today's stories? Send your thoughts (along with your full name and city of residence) to letters@ Letters are subject to editing for clarity, length, accuracy, and style.
