Sam Altman is "terrified" of voice ID fraudsters embracing AI — and threats of US bioweapon attacks keep him up at night

Bad actors and hackers are increasingly leaning more toward sophisticated techniques that camouflage their deceptive ploys from unsuspecting users. Perhaps more alarming, attackers are also leveraging generative AI to breach safety and privacy systems designed to keep confidential data safe.

While speaking to a group of financial regulators and industry experts at the Federal Reserve's Regulatory Capital Framework Conference on Tuesday in Washington, D.C, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman revealed that he is alarmed by the continued use of voice authentication by banking institutions. It's especially concerning as AI becomes increasingly prevalent, with the potential of granting bad actors access to intricate data (via Business Insider).

According to the executive, "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."

Altman indicated that the use of voice authentication in banking institutions was "a crazy thing to still be doing," further suggesting that "AI has fully defeated most of the ways that people authenticate currently — other than passwords."

The CEO warned that AI has the potential to cause "a significant impending fraud crisis," calling on financial institutions to find a better and safer way to identify their clients' identities, which can't be infiltrated using AI.

Here's what keeps Sam Altman up at night

During an intensive Q&A session, Sam Altman was asked what keeps him up at night. The executive indicated that a large-scale financial attack was at the top of this list.

The executive painted a scenario where an adversary of the United States potentially gained access to a powerful and sophisticated AI system to attack the country using bioweapons. He also indicated that the bad actors could leverage AI to "break into financial systems and take everyone's money."

Perhaps more concerning, Altman indicated that there would be very little we could do to mitigate the situation in case it presented itself. He explained that it would be an extreme sport to keep elaborate and protective measures in place against a bad actor with smarter AI at their disposal.

Interestingly, Google's DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis indicated that the world might be on the verge of achieving the coveted AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) benchmark, but society isn't ready for all that it entails. He further revealed that those prospects keep him up at night.