OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has said that the world should accept “some bad things” resulting from the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) because of the benefits the technology will bring, arguing that people should retain agency over how they use AI.
“We believe that the world should accept some bad things happening for the benefits of this technology and people having the agency,” Altman said in an interview.
Altman said that people will do “orders of magnitude more” good things than bad things with AI, making the trade-off worthwhile.
He also said that there was a fundamental difference between OpenAI and rival AI company Anthropic over how the technology should be regulated, saying there was “a lot of daylight” between the two companies.
Altman said that OpenAI supports a “lighter-touch regulatory stance”, despite publicly agreeing with Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei’s calls for a slowdown in AI development last month.
The OpenAI CEO also rejected warnings about “really catastrophic risks” from AI, including concerns about humans suffering “a serious loss of control” over the technology.
Altman stated that he disagreed with the idea that AI was so dangerous that “a single lab in San Francisco should have it and make sure nothing bad happens.”
He also criticised attempts to give AI models authority over human judgment.
In a post on X over the weekend, Altman said he was “very uncomfortable about people trying to ascribe religious force or a surrender of human judgment to AI models” and called it “a real safety issue.”
His remarks followed a media report that Anthropic co-founder Christopher Olah had held meetings with several religious leaders where he appeared to argue that the company’s models could display human-like behaviour and were likely conscious beings.
On Friday, Pope Leo XIV wrote on X that in the era of AI it was becoming urgent to distinguish human art from what machines produce. “Algorithms lack the spark of humanity,” the pope said.
