Accept ‘bad things’ in return for benefits of AI, says Sam Altman

Sam Altman says he believes the world should accept “bad things” happening with AI in exchange for the benefits of the technology.

The chief executive of OpenAI cited hacks, scams and “other bad things that will happen” in an interview that sparked an instant backlash from critics of the big AI companies. His comments came after one of his company’s safety experts resigned, saying at the weekend that its “culture is broken”.

In an interview released on Monday, Altman was asked about how OpenAI’s approach to safety differed from that of Anthropic, which has called for the industry to slow down after one of its researchers quit, warning that AI experts believed “it could kill us all by the end of the decade”.

“I think there’s a lot of daylight,” Altman said. “One of the differences between us and some of the stricter AI safety people is that we believe that the world should accept some bad things happening for the benefits of this technology and people having the agency [to use AI widely].

“I do think the lighter touch regulatory stance we advocate for comes with an accepting of the fact that some bad things are going to happen as society figures out the resilience.

“I wouldn’t take a trade of saying we will make sure there’s no major hacks, there’s no misuse of this technology, there’s zero scams or all the other bad things that will happen because I think that people will do tremendously – orders of magnitude – more good stuff than bad stuff.”