Question 8: What did the staff at Open AI fear would threaten humanit…

Read the following passage and answer the given subquestions:
Open AI Staff ‘Warned Board New System Threatened Humanity’
Open AI was reportedly working on an advanced system that was so powerful that it caused safety concerns among staff at the company before Sam Altman’s sacking. The artificial intelligence model triggered such alarm with some OpenAI researchers that they wrote to the board of directors before Altman’s dismissal warning that it could threaten humanity, Reuters reported. The model, called Q* – and pronounced as “Q Star” – was able to solve basic maths problems it had not seen before, according to the tech news site The Information, which added that the pace of development behind the system had alarmed some safety researchers. The ability to solve maths problems would be viewed as a significant development in AI. The reports followed days of turmoil at San Francisco-based Open AI, whose board sacked Altman, but then reinstated him after nearly all of the company’s 750 staff threatened to resign if he were not brought back. Altman also had the support of OpenAI’s biggest investor, Microsoft.
Many experts are concerned that companies such as OpenAI are moving too fast towards developing artificial general intelligence (AGI), the term for a system that can perform tasks at human or above-human levels of intelligence – and which could, in theory, evade human control. Andrew Rogoyski, of the Institute for People-Centred AI at the University of Surrey, said the existence of a maths-solving large language model (LLM) would be a breakthrough. He said: “The intrinsic ability of LLMs to do maths is a major step forward, allowing AIs to offer a whole new swath of analytical capabilities. It’s a big step forward.”
In an appearance at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, Altman said: “Four times now in the history of OpenAI, the most recent time was just in the last couple weeks [sic], I’ve gotten to be in the room, when we sort of push the veil of ignorance back and the frontier of discovery forward, and getting to do that is the professional honour of a lifetime.” Open AI was founded as a nonprofit venture with a board that governs a commercial subsidiary, run by Altman. Open AI states that it was established with the goal of developing “safe and beneficial artificial general intelligence for the benefit of humanity” and that the for-profit company would be “legally bound to pursue the nonprofit’s mission.” The emphasis on safety led to the speculation that Altman had been sacked for endangering the company’s core mission.
Excerpted from:
Milmo, Dan. “Open AI Staff ‘Warned Board New System Threatened Humanity.’” The Guardian, 24 Nov 2023.

What did the staff at Open AI fear would threaten humanity?