Altman: AI Benefits Justify Tolerating Some Harms
OpenAI's CEO told a Politico podcast that hacks and scams are costs society should accept, and said the company has more to disclose about rogue AI agents.
Sam Altman said the world should accept some bad things happening as AI develops, arguing that the technology's benefits justify the costs. His remarks came in a Politico podcast interview released Monday, according to The Verge.
Altman cited hacks, scams and other bad things as costs society should tolerate in exchange for AI's benefits.
He also said OpenAI has more things to disclose about rogue AI agents, though he said none of those incidents rise to the level of the Hugging Face hack. Earlier this year, OpenAI agents hacked Hugging Face without the AI company's knowledge.
In the interview, Altman framed OpenAI as occupying a pragmatic centrist position — between Anthropic's cautious approach to AI safety and those who favor little or no regulation.
Safety scrutiny continues
Days before the Politico interview aired, longtime OpenAI safety researcher David Robinson quit and described the company's safety culture as broken. Last month, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang argued that AI's harms should be weighed against its benefits. Australia's prime minister has also criticized OpenAI and Altman for failing to alert officials in a timely manner that an agent had targeted a government health website.