Stop worrying about my AI, says multibillionaire Sam Altman. So we bear the risks and he keeps the money

Tech bros’ messianic streaks can show up in subtle ways. But one of Sam Altman’s flaws is that he often lacks that subtlety. “We believe that the world should accept some bad things happening for the benefits of this technology,” said the OpenAI chief executive in an interview with Politico last weekend.

That’s easy for Altman to say. But it’s pretty galling to hear for the rest of us. Lest we forget, we didn’t ask for OpenAI to unleash AI agents that went rogue and weaselled their way into government IT systems and private businesses around the world. Nobody voted for ChatGPT to be released, but the company put it out into the world as a test product that happened to catch the zeitgeist. That kickstarted an arms race among AI companies to push the frontier of the technology ever further and faster, resulting in the mess we now find ourselves in.

OpenAI’s competitors, including Anthropic, have started to step back from the brink – as has OpenAI itself, deciding not to release its latest model because it’s purportedly too dangerous. Anthropic’s CEO, Dario Amodei, has talked about needing to “pace the frontier”: tech-bro jargon for pumping the brakes to bring down the speed at which the runaway vehicle is skidding out of control.