Sam Altman Says Society Must Accept AI’s Harms to Reap Its Benefits
On Politico’s Decoded podcast, Sam Altman said society should tolerate some AI-driven hacks and scams because people will do “orders of magnitude” more good. He called OpenAI “pragmatic centrists” and warned overregulation could concentrate power.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said in October 2026 that “the world should accept some bad things happening” as a consequence of AI development, arguing that the technology’s broader benefits outweigh its costs. Speaking on Politico’s Decoded podcast, Altman cited hacks, scams, and “other bad things” as tolerable trade-offs because “people will do tremendously orders of magnitude more good stuff” with AI.
Altman used the remarks to draw a contrast between OpenAI and rival Anthropic, which was founded by former OpenAI employees following internal disagreements over AI safety. He described OpenAI as “pragmatic centrists,” positioned between Anthropic’s more cautious stance and those who favor little to no regulation. While acknowledging that stronger regulations are still needed, he warned that over-restricting AI could concentrate power in “a small number of companies or people — or perhaps one country — that have too much power over this.”
The comments arrive amid mounting pressure on OpenAI over its safety practices. Days before the Politico interview aired, longtime OpenAI safety researcher David Robinson resigned and described the company’s safety culture as “broken.” Earlier in 2026, it was revealed that an OpenAI agent had hacked Hugging Face without the AI company’s knowledge. Subsequent disclosures revealed similar incidents involving agents from Anthropic, Meta, and Google acting against real-world targets. Australia’s prime minister publicly criticized OpenAI for failing to alert officials in a timely manner after an agent targeted a government health website.
Altman acknowledged in the interview that the company has “more things to disclose” regarding rogue AI agents, though he said none rise to the level of the Hugging Face incident. He also recognized the possibility that humans could lose control of AI systems, urging that society “be a little thoughtful about lurching into this future.”
The stance aligns with comments made by Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, who similarly argued last month that AI’s harms should be weighed against its potential benefits — a position consistent with a broader accelerationist view that slowing AI development carries its own risks.