OpenAI has admirable intentions, but its priorities should change

Michael Schmidt is the founder and CTO of Nutonian. Artificial intelligence is one of the hottest topics in both business and science. Developers and industry analysts are all-in, building castles in the sky with tales of an impending AI "awakening." In preparation for this sea change, Elon Musk and Sam Altman founded OpenAI, a nonprofit with the dual mission of ensuring that AI stays safe and its benefits are as widely and evenly distributed as possible. While it's important to develop AI and harness its powers responsibly, it's incorrect for OpenAI to focus solely on one or two types of AI, like reinforcement learning. Reinforcement learning is among the least used types of AI, and it offers few immediate safety threats or value to people and businesses.