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OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has argued that society should accept some negative consequences from artificial intelligence in exchange for the technology’s broader benefits, including giving people wider access to powerful AI tools. His comments, made in an interview with Politico’s technology newsletter Decoded, come as the AI industry faces growing debate over how quickly to develop advanced systems and how tightly to regulate them.
Altman’s position puts OpenAI at odds with rival Anthropic over the extent of AI regulation. While he acknowledged that advanced AI can create serious problems, he argued against an approach that attempts to eliminate every possible instance of misuse before making the technology available.
According to Altman, OpenAI believes AI should remain broadly accessible rather than being controlled by a small number of companies or institutions. He questioned the idea that a single AI laboratory should have exclusive control over powerful systems to prevent harmful outcomes.
He said OpenAI supports a lighter-touch regulatory approach, arguing that AI's benefits could substantially outweigh the harms. Altman also said he would not accept a model in which companies promise there will be no major hacks, scams, or other forms of misuse.
Altman described a significant difference between OpenAI and Anthropic in their regulatory approaches. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has pushed for a slower pace of frontier AI development and stronger safeguards around increasingly capable systems.
The debate has become more prominent as AI companies develop systems capable of handling increasingly complex tasks. Concerns range from cyberattacks and fraud to the possibility that advanced models could behave in ways their developers did not anticipate.
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Despite his support for accepting some risks, Altman said that does not mean every potential consequence of AI should be tolerated. He specifically distinguished between bounded risks that can be understood and managed and catastrophic scenarios involving a serious loss of control over AI systems.
His comments reflect the difficult balance facing the AI industry: expanding access to increasingly capable technology while putting safeguards in place for threats that could have much larger consequences. The disagreement over where to draw that line will likely remain a major part of the debate around AI regulation.
