Gary Marcus senses that Sam Altman is building the most powerful manipulating tool of all times.

The CEO of OpenAI – an artificial intelligence research organization based in California, the U.S. – has suggested that the billions of dollars poured into this non-profit project are begging its transformation into a profit-making company.

Sam Altman’s plan, according to a respected scholar and AI researcher, will reshape OpenAI profoundly to the worst possible scenario.

Speaking during a seminar at Stanford's Center for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence last month, Gary Marcus – emeritus professor of psychology and neural science at New York University and founder of Geometric.AI – said that a commercial OpenAI would leave a deep environmental footprint and would pose existential risks to society.

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In his assessment, OpenAI is now a powerful manipulating tool that is capable of generating falsehoods and could soon take an even more dystopian pivot, à la George Orwell's novel "1984," by getting into the business of surveillance on users.

"My guess is that OpenAI is going to become the most Orwellian company of all time. What they're going to be pressed to do is become a surveillance company," Marcus stated, pointing out that the future company will have somehow to generate revenue in order to please its investors and justify the huge money being absorbed into AI products.

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To investors’ disappointment, AI technology is plagued with problems like hallucinations and boneheaded errors, which make it unreliable. The return of investment is currently low and selling data to third parties seems to be a good way to amortize the losses.

The departure from the non-profit research mission and Altman’s personal issues with morality and ethics would make OpenAI perhaps the most dangerous corporation of all times, the scientist warned.

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