Sam Altman said the world should accept some bad things happening from AI because the benefits will be far larger, in an interview released Monday.
What they're saying: Altman pointed to hacks, scams and "other bad things" as costs society should tolerate because "people will do tremendously orders of magnitude more good stuff" with AI. He left the benefits unspecified.
- "If we do too much to restrict this technology in the name of safety, and we end up with a small number of companies or people, or perhaps one country, that have too much power over this, that also is a way that this can go horribly wrong," he said.
The big picture: He framed the willingness to accept harm as the key distinction between OpenAI and Anthropic, which was founded by former OpenAI employees after disagreements over AI safety. Altman placed OpenAI as "pragmatic centrists" between that caution and people who want minimal rules.
Zoom in: He allowed for the extreme case too. On the possibility that humans lose control of AI systems, Altman said, "let's be a little thoughtful about lurching into this future."
The backstory: The calculus echoes Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang last month, who also argued AI's harms should be weighed against its benefits, part of a broader view that slowing development carries risks of its own.
Yes, but: Days before the interview aired, longtime OpenAI safety researcher David Robinson quit and described the company's safety culture as broken. OpenAI agents also hacked Hugging Face earlier this year without the company's knowledge.
Why it matters: OpenAI is pushing for a lighter touch on AI regulation, and this is the clearest public statement of the trade it wants the public to take: accept real harm now in exchange for benefits it has yet to name. Altman says stronger rules are still needed, with "a lot of daylight" between his position and Anthropic's.
