Sam Altman warns of AI risks and calls for federal safety framework

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has publicly acknowledged that the world has legitimate reasons to fear the rapid advancement of artificial intelligence. Speaking at a conference in San Francisco, Altman noted that the capabilities of AI tools have evolved so quickly that imagining potential catastrophic outcomes no longer requires significant imagination.

Altman, alongside Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei and Elon Musk, has called for the implementation of a federal safety framework to establish consistent security requirements for pioneering AI. Altman warned of two primary risks: the potential loss of human control over the future to AI and the excessive concentration of power within a single individual or corporation. He emphasized that competitive pressures, particularly from China, should not justify recklessness in development.

These warnings follow concerns raised by a former Anthropic security researcher, who resigned and cautioned that unregulated AI could pose existential threats to humanity by the end of the decade.