Sam Altman might accept the ‘bad things’ that come with AI, but he doesn’t speak for everyone
For the past month, slowing the development of artificial intelligence has been at the forefront of AI discourse. After a former OpenAI and Anthropic employee left the industry in September citing that “neither company is acting responsibly,” AI leaders and everyday citizens alike sounded off on the potential of an AI-powered doomsday.
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei responded with an essay about the importance of “pacing the frontier,” or slowing AI development to prioritize safety. At the time, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman agreed with Amodei, writing in a social media post that AI development “should be slower than it otherwise could be.”
But in a new interview, Altman seems to have changed his tune, saying OpenAI’s looser stance on AI safety is what sets the company apart from Anthropic—and some “bad things” that could happen as a result are a necessary evil.
On Politico’s podcast Decoded, host Brendan Bordelon asked Altman where OpenAI diverged from Anthropic and its “pro-regulation CEO” on AI policy.
“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,” Altman replied.
“I do think the lighter-touch regulatory stance we advocate for comes with an accepting of the fact that some bad things are going to happen as society figures out the resilience,” he continued. “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, because I think that people will do tremendously—orders of magnitude—more good stuff than bad stuff.”
“We believe the world should accept some bad things happening for the benefits of this technology.”
In a conversation for the first edition of Decoded, a new daily newsletter and podcast, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman talked with POLITICO’s @BrendanBordelon about trade-offs, AI safety, and how his company is different from Anthropic.
Subscribe to Decoded for the full conversation with Sam Altman: https://t.co/YHJJsDOQVh
— POLITICO (@politico) October 4, 2026
Altman’s comments immediately went viral, with post after post criticizing Altman for apparently valuing AI advancement over human safety. [Continue reading…]