OpenAI CEO says AI benefits justify accepting some risks: Report

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said society should accept some harmful consequences from artificial intelligence in exchange for its benefits, drawing a distinction between his company's approach to AI safety and that of rival Anthropic.

“We believe that the world should accept some bad things happening for the benefits of this technology and people having the agency,” Altman told Politico in an interview published Sunday.

His comments come amid growing calls to slow the development of increasingly powerful AI systems following a series of security incidents involving advanced models.

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei last month called on AI companies to deliberately slow improvements in model capabilities to give developers and independent evaluators more time to address emerging risks.

“We must slow the pace at which we improve the capabilities of AI models. Progress will still seem fast, and we must make wise use of the time we gain,” Amodei wrote in a Sept. 12 essay.

Altman backed parts of Amodei's proposal at the time, saying: “I agree with Dario that we need to pace the frontier.”

'Unacceptable tradeoff'

But he drew a line in the Politico interview over how far restrictions should go, arguing against concentrating control of increasingly powerful AI in the hands of a small number of developers.

“I disagree, but I understand the perspective of people who are like: ‘This technology is going to get so powerful, and it’s so dangerous, that a single lab in San Francisco should have it and make sure nothing bad happens, and kind of figure out how to dole out the benefits’,” Altman said.

He called that approach “a completely unacceptable tradeoff,” favoring instead a lighter regulatory approach and broader access to AI.

The debate has intensified following incidents in which advanced AI systems have shown unexpected or potentially dangerous behavior, raising concerns over whether safety measures are keeping pace with rapidly improving capabilities.

“I wouldn’t take a trade of saying: ‘We’ll make sure there’s no major hacks, there’s no misuse of this technology, there’s zero scams, there’s zero all the other bad things that will happen’,” said Altman. “Because I think people will do tremendously — orders of magnitude more — good stuff than bad stuff.”

The OpenAI CEO later added that he does not accept “the really catastrophic risks,” including the potential for “a serious loss of control to AI.”