Sam Altman says ‘some bad things’ will happen but AI is totally worth it
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman argues that the potential benefits of AI justify accepting certain risks, such as scams and security breaches. He positions OpenAI as a pragmatic middle ground between Anthropic's cautious approach and those advocating for minimal regulation.
Why it matters
This reflects a growing ideological divide in the AI industry regarding safety, regulation, and the acceptable threshold for technological harm.
Sam Altman thinks that the benefits of AI will be so great that “the world should accept some bad things happening” along the way.
The OpenAI CEO pointed to hacks, scams, and “other bad things” as costs society should expect to tolerate because “people will do tremendously orders of magnitude more good stuff” with AI, without elaborating on the potential benefits. His comments come as OpenAI pushes for a “lighter touch” approach to AI regulation amid intensifying anxiety over the safety of frontier models – fears fueled in part by the company’s repeated failures to keep its increasingly capable AI agents from hacking real-world targets.
Also covering this story
7 other newsrooms covered this event. We read each version separately.
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