Oprah Winfrey says ‘we should honor’ AI

Oprah Winfrey is offering her take and sharing her experience on artificial intelligence ahead of her ABC Primetime special, “AI and the Future of Us: An Oprah Winfrey Special.”
Speaking to ABC News’ Rebecca Jarvis in an interview with “Good Morning America” which aired on Thursday, the multi-hyphenate media mogul said “we are in for the ride of our lives” with the technology.
“Life for all of us is about to be very different,” she said.
Winfrey told Jarvis she has always seen herself as “the surrogate viewer” of the topics she explores and understands that if she is curious to understand something, she isn’t the only one.
“If I don’t know the answer, I know that the other millions of people who are watching are feeling the same,” she said, adding that her first encounter with the AI didn’t happen until her first conversation with Sam Altman, the CEO of Open AI, the company behind ChatGPT.
She continued, “And after he was telling me about all the things that I could do, I was saying, ‘okay, don’t be scared. Don’t be scared. You can get the ChatGPT app.'”
Winfrey shared her first experience with the technology was asking for AirBnb listings for a friend.
“And it was miraculous to me that before you can practically finish the requests, the answer has come back to you,” she said.
In the new ABC primetime special, Winfrey takes a deep dive into AI by exploring “the profound impact of artificial intelligence on people’s daily lives, demystifying the technology and empowering viewers to understand and navigate the rapidly evolving AI future,” according to a press release.
In addition to Altman, Winfrey will also interview Microsoft Co-Founder and Chair of the Gates Foundation Bill Gates, YouTube creator and technologist Marques Brownlee, and FBI Director Christopher Wray, among others.
Hoping to offer viewers a crash course on AI during the special, Winfrey told “GMA” her biggest question going into the conversations with the experts would be, “what is the possibility and what’s the peril? What do we need to be doing now?”
“So what I’m thinking is we need to get ahead and not wait until so many lives are impacted negatively or damaged or destroyed,” she explained. “And I think because it’s here and here to stay, we need to develop a new sense of muscle for discerning what is real and what is not.”
Winfrey also shared her opinion and advice for those who have fear over the technology and have yet to become a user.
“I don’t think we should be scared,” she said. “I think we should be disciplined and we should honor it and have a reverence for what is to come and respect, because I think it’s going to change in ways that are unimaginable for the good.”
However, she also reminded the public that “there’s the yin and yang of everything.”
“And so we need to do whatever we can so that we are not in the same position that we are now with social media,” she added. “Now is the time.”
“AI and the Future of Us” will premiere on Thursday, Sept. 12 on ABC at 8 pm E.T. and available to stream on Hulu the next day.