Sam Altman's OpenAI Is in Talks for a New Funding Round Valuing It at $1.2 Trillion Instead of an IPO. Here's Why He Called Going Public Now "Ill-Advised."

ChatGPT developer OpenAI won't be going public this year after all.

That's the latest word from co-founder and CEO Sam Altman, anyway. In a recent interview with Fortune magazine, Altman said that -- in light of safety concerns regarding OpenAI and other similar artificial intelligence platforms -- "right now would be an ill-advised moment to go public."

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The safety concerns in question are the prospect that AI systems could make unchecked decisions on their own that result in measurable and meaningful harm to humanity, up to and including taking actions that cause human extinction.

He wasn't joking, either. Although Altman was unwilling to affirm Fortune Editor-in-Chief Alyson Shontell's question of whether a 10% chance of that happening was a fair working number, he was genuinely concerned enough to comment, "Whether it's 10 or eight or six, the point is ... we need to act such that we are not taking any of those numbers of risk."

He added, "And I believe we can."