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OpenAI Altman: AI’s Enormous Benefits Justify Taking on Some Risks
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- DeepHorus
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman recently stated in an interview on the “Decoded” segment that his company and rival Anthropic still have fundamental differences in their worldviews regarding AI regulation. Altman said that the enormous benefits brought by AI technology are well worth society taking on some of the risks, and that the technology should remain broadly accessible to the public. His remarks once again drew widespread attention to the differences in the regulatory positions of the two major AI companies.
For a long time, Anthropic has been regarded as the industry’s most steadfast advocate of strict AI regulation, and its CEO, Dario Amodei, has repeatedly called for tighter controls on frontier AI models. By contrast, OpenAI had previously favored a light-touch regulatory approach, emphasizing the promotion of technological innovation while ensuring safety. The two companies’ differences in policy philosophy have existed for a long time and have become an important issue in the field of AI governance.
Altman made clear during the interview that there is an enormous gulf between the two sides. When asked exactly where his disagreement with Amodei lay, Altman candidly said: “We believe that, in order to reap the benefits of this technology and give people autonomy, the world should be willing to endure some of the costs and negative consequences that come with it.” These remarks clearly expressed his core position on weighing risks against benefits.
Notably, despite the fundamental differences in their philosophies, the policy gap between the two companies has been gradually narrowing. In recent months, OpenAI, worn down by having to deal with highly publicized cyberattacks and incidents involving models losing control or becoming unstable, has shifted toward supporting stricter industry rules. This change has caused OpenAI and Anthropic to show signs of convergence in their regulatory positions.
Although their positions have moved closer together, Altman has continued to try to distinguish his company’s regulatory position from Anthropic’s, emphasizing that the two companies still have fundamentally different core philosophies. He then further clarified that he, too, cannot accept “truly catastrophic disaster risks,” including the potential for “humanity to lose serious control over AI.” This shows that he is not ignoring the risks, but is instead seeking to maximize the benefits of the technology within an acceptable range of risk.
As countries around the world accelerate the advancement of AI regulatory legislation, the differences between OpenAI and Anthropic’s positions and the way those positions evolve will continue to affect the direction of industry policy. Altman’s recent remarks not only revealed deep differences in how leading AI companies perceive risk, but also provided an important reference for the outside world in understanding the complex dynamics of AI governance.
