OpenAI CEO says AI benefits outweigh certain risks

OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman told Politico's Decoded newsletter that the benefits of artificial intelligence merit accepting certain risks and that the public should retain broad access to the technology. He said the world must tolerate some negative outcomes in order to reap the technology's advantages and preserve individual agency.

Altman noted a significant gap between his regulatory outlook and that of Anthropic, whose CEO Dario Amodei has advocated for a slower pace of AI development and greater centralisation of research. "I disagree, but I understand the perspective of people who are like, 'This technology is going to get so powerful, and it's so dangerous, that a single lab in San Francisco should have it and make sure nothing bad happens,'" Altman said.

He characterised a strict, single-lab control model as "a completely unacceptable trade-off" and rejected the idea of guaranteeing zero hacks, misuse or scams. "Because I think people will do tremendously – orders of magnitude more – good stuff than bad stuff," he added.

Altman also agreed with Amodei that frontier labs should "pace the frontier" of AI development and support independent third-party oversight of model training and safety reporting. He has previously warned that losing control of AI alignment or concentrating excessive power in one entity could lead to dystopian outcomes, emphasizing that AI must serve humanity.