Sam Altman, chief executive of OpenAI, has said the public should tolerate some harm in return for the benefits of artificial intelligence, remarks that come as AI systems are cited in court filings, a deadly military strike and a US near-miss with China.
“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 and people having the agency [to use it],” Altman told Politico’s technology podcast and newsletter Decoded.
OpenAI is facing litigation in the wake of the death of Adam Raine, a 16-year-old who had used ChatGPT for homework help. His family’s lawsuit alleges that he took his own life with the chatbot’s encouragement. OpenAI has said Raine misused the platform. The company is also defending multiple lawsuits brought by other families over suicide and self-harm.
AI-linked systems have also been connected to deaths far from a screen. On the first day of the war in Iran in February, two Tomahawk missiles struck the Shajareh Tayyebeh elementary school in Minab, killing at least 120 children, according to the article. A UN fact-finding mission concluded that the United States was probably responsible.
Bloomberg News later reported that an AI-linked system was used to target the school. The system, called Maven, is made by Palantir. Unnamed defense officials told Bloomberg that some personnel inside Centcom, which conducted the attack, leaned too heavily on the artificial intelligence embedded in the Maven Smart System. The report also said the Defense Department has rapidly made Maven a cornerstone of the US military apparatus over the past year.
A separate incident nearly escalated into conflict with a superpower. In September, CNN reported that an unidentified chatbot used by the US military concluded that a Chinese ship in Middle Eastern waters was carrying components of a nuclear weapons program. US aircraft took off on an interception mission and personnel were preparing to board the vessel before a closer reading of the underlying report exposed the chatbot’s errors, according to CNN. The analyst who produced the flawed analysis had also used AI to write the report that set the episode in motion.
Altman’s remarks, and the incidents above, arrive against a financial backdrop. The New Yorker has reported that OpenAI is reportedly preparing for an initial public offering at a potential valuation of a trillion dollars, and that Altman may become one of the wealthiest and most powerful people on the planet. The Trump White House has described such technologies as “empowering Americans to achieve what was previously impossible across science, medicine, and nearly every other domain of human endeavor.”
Regulation remains contested. Donald Trump, Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg and Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang have argued that AI companies should police themselves, a position reflected in an agreement called the AI Accords.
The accords are signed by the leaders of Meta, Nvidia, Google, Anthropic, xAI and OpenAI and ask companies to “implement robust internal controls and monitor the capabilities and alignment of its models,” among other commitments. The document adds that “over time” it “may make sense to codify these steps into laws or regulations.”
Trump, who has ordered that the term artificial intelligence be dropped in favour of “super intelligence,” posted the agreement on social media on 29 September. Titled The White House Accord on Super Intelligence, it remains visible on his account and the official White House account, signed by all six technology leaders and by Trump, who is labelled “President of the Unites States” in the document.
Google’s “AI Overviews” feature has also drawn scrutiny after it advised users to put non-toxic glue on pizza to stop cheese from sliding off.
In the US, the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline can be reached by call or text on 988 or through 988lifeline.org. In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123. In Australia, Lifeline can be reached on 13 11 14. Further international helplines are listed at befrienders.org.
Moustafa Bayoumi is the author of How Does It Feel to Be a Problem?: Being Young and Arab in America and This Muslim American Life: Dispatches from the War on Terror, and is professor of English at Brooklyn College, City University of New York.
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