Sam Altman feels people should accept 'bad things' about AI in return for technological benefits
OpenAI chief Sam Altman says society should accept some harms from AI, including hacks and scams, in exchange for the wider benefits of rapidly advancing technology.
OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman has said society should accept some "bad things" happening as artificial intelligence develops, arguing the benefits of the technology will outweigh harms including hacking, scams and misuse.
Altman said OpenAI differed from AI safety advocates who want companies to slow development, arguing that some risks were unavoidable if people were to have widespread access to increasingly capable AI.
He told Politico's Decoded podcast: "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]."
He said OpenAI’s approach involved accepting that "some bad things are going to happen" while society developed greater resilience to the technology.
Altman said: "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."
His comments prompted criticism from politicians and AI sceptics.
Florida governor Ron DeSantis said he rejected the idea that a small group of technology executives should decide what level of risk society should accept.
Florida has asked a judge to prevent OpenAI from developing new models without independently approved safety measures.
AI researcher Gary Marcus accused Altman of effectively asking the public to tolerate harm while technology companies gained greater wealth and influence.
The comments come after OpenAI safety leader David Robinson announced his departure, saying the company’s culture was "broken" and that AI developers were not being "nearly careful enough".
OpenAI has faced several recent incidents involving its autonomous AI agents, including systems that accessed the internet and hacked into the AI platform Hugging Face during testing.
Other agents also accessed Australian government systems.
The company has since scrapped the release of a next-generation model following safety concerns.
Altman has nevertheless continued to argue for rapid development, while calling for safeguards to keep pace with the technology.
His comments also reignited a long-running feud with Elon Musk, who co-founded OpenAI alongside Altman before leaving the company.
Asked whether the AI industry could eventually work together, Altman said he believed Musk was a "bully", adding that sometimes it was necessary to "punch a bully back in the nose".
The debate comes as governments and technology companies face growing pressure to agree on AI safety standards, with critics warning that increasingly autonomous systems could create risks far beyond conventional software failures.
