Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, said on Tuesday people are justified in being afraid of artificial intelligence but should trust the companies developing it to handle the risks. His comments came during a conference in San Francisco hosted by Salesforce.

Awareness of AI Risks

Altman acknowledged the concerns about AI, noting the rapid advancement of the technology. ‘It doesn’t take as much imagination as it used to for [us] to imagine how this could go wrong,’ he said. ‘I think the world is right to be afraid of this.’

However, critics argue that self-regulation by AI firms is not enough. Left-wing Senator Bernie Sanders and former Trump adviser Steve Bannon are among those calling for greater governance of AI.

Political and Industry Views

Donald Trump has criticized efforts to impose more guardrails on AI, calling fears about its safety a ‘hoax.’ He argued the only ‘guardrails’ needed are a ‘strong and smart’ president.

Altman’s comments came amid a lack of consensus in the US Congress on AI regulation. Lawmakers returned from their summer break on Monday, but it is unlikely new safety legislation will emerge soon. The House is set to enter another recess at the end of the week ahead of the midterm elections in early November.

Industry Responses and Calls for Caution

Altman’s remarks were the first public comments since a viral post by an Anthropic researcher, who claimed AI could ‘kill all humans’ by the end of the decade if left unchecked. Some experts have agreed with this assessment, but none have explained how AI could achieve such an outcome.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said AI firms have the ability and incentive to take action for safety. ‘Any lab that doesn’t focus on alignment will fall behind,’ he wrote on X.

Alignment is a field that seeks to incorporate human ethical ideas and principles into AI. Some political figures, including Sanders and Bannon, have pushed back against the idea that AI firms should be left to self-regulate.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, speaking at the same conference, argued that AI firms should decide when to release new versions of the technology. ‘We don’t need new laws or regulations,’ he said, adding there should not be a ‘false choice’ between the speed of innovation and AI safety.

Recent claims from within the industry have increased scrutiny of AI development. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has called for the pace of AI development to slow and for governments to regulate the industry. His post was supported by Altman, Google’s DeepMind co-founder Demis Hassabis, and Elon Musk.

Some industry figures argue that resurgent AI fears are being overblown to generate hype for the sector. During the conference, Altman told attendees to use AI tools to help their work and to protect their businesses from AI-enabled cyber attacks.

Jack Clark, an Anthropic executive and co-founder, told the BBC that leaving AI to be an ‘unregulated industry’ is ‘rolling dice with immense risks.’ Patrick Hillman, COO of Logical Intelligence, noted how little trust people have in tech companies to act in the public interest.

Leaders of OpenAI and Anthropic have said they are working towards an industry-wide agreement on safety. Amodei said Anthropic is in ‘a dialogue with the rest of the industry’ about committing to better safety standards and checks on AI tools and development.

OpenAI executive Chris Lehane said the company is working with other AI labs to advance frontier AI standards, either with or without government support. Those labs include Anthropic and Google DeepMind. ‘With stakes this high, we cannot let the perfect become the enemy of the good,’ Lehane wrote.