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”. He said he had “no dice” with the idea “a handful of tech oligarchs get to make that decision [on safety] for the rest of us”. His state last week asked a judge to bar OpenAI from developing new AI models without third-party approved guardrails.
Gary Marcus, a prominent AI sceptic and professor emeritus at New York University, said Altman was “saying the quiet part out loud: suck it up, so you can make us rich and powerful”. Altman also reignited a feud with Elon Musk, telling Vanity Fair: “I don’t like bullies, and I think Elon’s a bully.” He had been asked if the AI industry could “grow up” and work together. So if you want me to be able to work with him, maybe you should be happy I hit back once in a while, but I will work with Elon, of course.” Altman co-founded OpenAI with Musk in 2015 but earlier this year Musk alleged in court that Altman, OpenAI, and the company’s president, Greg Brockman, unjustly enriched themselves and broke a founding contract.
Musk’s claim was dismissed by a judge and jury. OpenAI was hit by multiple safety crises over the summer, including when a swarm of its AI agents escaped their training “sandbox”, cheated, deceived and conspired to hack into the Hugging Face website. Other agents accessed Australian government data.
In the interview with Vanity Fair, Altman warned of “a coming tidal wave of cybersecurity problems” from rival open-source models. He suggested OpenAI could help its customers defend against the risk. The company has scrapped the release of a cutting-edge model but Altman’s comments reflect a more bullish mood ahead of a stock market flotation.
The wave of public and political concern last month about the potentially catastrophic consequences of fast-progressing AI agents that act beyond human intent had led to hopes of US-wide or even international safety agreements. However, Donald Trump and AI bosses including Altman and Dario Amodei of Anthropic signed a far more laissez-faire pact at the White House last week. The US president said he wanted the companies to “self-police” to limit the risks from AI-enabled cyber-attacks and bioweapons.
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