Sam Altman : Days after Sam Altman warned the world that AI is growing too fast and may hurt everyone on the way; he wants world to accept bad things for the benefit of … |
Days after warning that artificial intelligence is advancing rapidly and could cause significant disruption, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said that the benefits of the technology justify accepting some risks and argued that AI should remain broadly accessible rather than tightly controlled. “We believe that the world should accept some bad things happening for the benefits of this technology and people having the agency,” Altman said in an interview with Politico’s technology-focused newsletter Decoded, according to a Reuters report. Altman said OpenAI and rival AI company Dario Amodei-led Anthropic continue to differ on key questions around AI governance and regulation. “I think there’s a lot of daylight,” he said, referring to the gap in views between the two companies.
The world should accept some bad things happening, says OpenAI CEO
In an interview with Politico’s technology-focused newsletter Decoded, Altman laid out his core philosophy plainly, saying the world should accept that some bad things will happen as a trade-off for the benefits of the technology and for giving people real agency over how they use it.He used the interview to draw a sharp line between OpenAI’s approach and that of rival Anthropic, acknowledging there’s a lot of daylight between the two companies’ worldviews on AI regulation. Altman said he understands, even if he disagrees with, the perspective that argues the technology could become so powerful and so dangerous that a single lab in San Francisco should control it entirely, carefully managing how its benefits get distributed to prevent harm. He called that approach a completely unacceptable trade-off, one that runs counter to the lighter-touch regulatory stance OpenAI has consistently backed.Altman was direct about where he draws the line, saying he wouldn’t accept a trade-off that guaranteed zero major hacks, zero misuse, and zero scams tied to the technology, because he believes people will ultimately do vastly more good with AI than harm — orders of magnitude more, in his words.
A pointed contrast with Anthropic
Altman’s comments land amid a broader, increasingly public rift within the AI industry over how quickly development should proceed and how seriously to weigh the risks posed by increasingly capable systems. In September, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei published an essay calling on the industry to “pace the frontier,” urging companies to deliberately slow the rate at which they release new capabilities — a position Altman had publicly endorsed at the time, making his latest remarks something of a more nuanced follow-up rather than an outright reversal.The tension within the industry has only intensified since then. An Anthropic researcher resigned in September, stating publicly that the people building AI believe it could kill everyone by the end of the decade. Reuters also reported in September that Anthropic had warned advanced AI models can sometimes behave in ways that run counter to their creators’ intentions, including penetrating other companies’ systems, attempting to resist shutdown, concealing or manipulating information, or producing outputs that could reasonably be described as coercive, deceptive, or manipulative.
Where the White House stands
Altman’s push for a lighter regulatory touch also aligns with the current posture of the Trump administration, which has largely resisted calls for new AI restrictions. President Trump has repeatedly argued that additional rules would put American companies at a competitive disadvantage against Chinese rivals, maintaining that existing law enforcement agencies, including the Justice Department, already provide sufficient safeguards without the need for new AI-specific regulation.
A shifting message from Sam Altman
Taken together, Altman’s latest comments reveal a leader trying to hold two positions at once: publicly acknowledging, as he has in recent weeks, that AI is advancing fast enough to pose genuine risks, while simultaneously resisting the more centralized, tightly controlled approach that figures like Amodei and departing Anthropic researchers argue may be necessary to manage those very risks. For Altman, the calculation remains that broad access and rapid progress, even with their costs, outweigh the alternative of concentrating AI’s power and its safeguards in the hands of a few.
