Sam Altman Says Accept Some AI Bad Things, It's a Tradeoff

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman says the world should just accept that AI will cause some harm, because the upside is worth it.

During an interview with Politico’s new podcast *Decoded*, Altman said the “world should accept some bad things happening for the benefits of this technology and people having the agency.” He argued that OpenAI backs a “lighter-touch regulatory stance” and that the “good stuff” would easily outweigh the bad.

“I wouldn’t take a trade of saying, ‘We’ll make sure there’s no major hacks, there’s no misuse of this technology, there’s zero scams, there’s zero all the other bad things that will happen,’” he told *Decoded*. “Because I think people will do tremendously — orders of magnitude more — good stuff than bad stuff.”

The interview was published on Politico’s *Decoded* podcast, according to www.barstoolsports.com. The exact date of the interview is not specified in the source.

Altman’s position is blunt: give the AI industry a pass on the messes it will make, because the payoff will dwarf the damage.

THE WALK-BACK

But even as Altman argued for tolerance, he pulled back during the same interview. He conceded he would not accept the “really catastrophic risks,” including a “serious loss of control to AI.”

Where exactly he draws that line, however, is murky at best, according to www.barstoolsports.com. The source does not confirm any specific boundary between acceptable harms and the catastrophic kind.

Altman did offer one concrete mechanism for accountability. He told *Decoded* there should be a “liability framework” holding tech companies responsible when things go wrong.

“If something goes wrong with our models during training, there’s going to be some version of that we need to be responsible for,” he said.

The concession stops short of a clear policy position. The source notes Congress remains deadlocked on meaningful AI rules, and Altman’s framework lacks defined terms.