ع
In an interview with the BBC this week, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman acknowledged that the public has legitimate reasons to fear artificial intelligence while insisting that people should place confidence in leading AI firms to steer the technology safely. Altman, who has long warned about potential downsides of advanced systems, framed the balance as essential for capturing benefits such as breakthroughs in science and medicine. The remarks align with his recent agreement to a call for pacing frontier AI development, according to a Reuters report published September 14.
A Reuters account detailed how Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei on September 13 urged slowing the pace of advanced AI capabilities, with Altman responding that OpenAI had been discussing similar steps internally and would adopt independent evaluators with employee-like access. Altman and Elon Musk both endorsed the proposal, the report added, while Google DeepMind Chair Demis Hassabis also signed on. Such voluntary slowdowns could become standard until safety standards gain wide recognition, Altman said in an employee meeting covered by Bloomberg and cited in a New York Times article from September 12.
Public skepticism toward AI companies has hardened, with an Anthropic survey fielded in late 2025 and released in June 2026 finding that only 15 percent of Americans trust such firms to make decisions about how the technology is developed and used. The same poll, which sampled nearly 52,000 adults, showed 64 percent of respondents across every state citing AI-induced job loss as their top fear, followed by cognitive dependency at 56 percent and misinformation at 52 percent. Support for government regulation exceeded 70 percent on a bipartisan basis, particularly in areas such as privacy, child safety and liability for harm.
A New York Times/Siena poll conducted September 8 to 13 and published the following day found 61 percent of voters opposed construction of large data centers that power AI models, including 75 percent of Democrats and 47 percent of Republicans. Younger voters showed even stronger resistance, with nearly 80 percent of those under 30 against such facilities. The survey indicated AI has not yet become a top voting issue, with less than 1 percent naming it as their most important concern compared with the economy.
The comments arrive months after an April attack on Altman’s San Francisco home, in which a suspect opposed to artificial intelligence threw a Molotov cocktail and later fired gunshots, according to an Associated Press report from April 13. The suspect had written about AI posing risks of human extinction, the federal complaint showed. Altman responded in a blog post that fear and anxiety about the technology are justified but that rhetoric and tactics must de-escalate to avoid real-world harm.
A Stanford University AI Index report released in April noted that while most people believe AI’s benefits outweigh its drawbacks, nervousness is growing and trust in institutions to manage the technology remains uneven. Florida filed a lawsuit against OpenAI and Altman in June, accusing the company of concealing risks including facilitation of self-harm and crime, the AP reported. Industry executives have continued to highlight both promise and peril, with Altman comparing some development efforts to the atomic bomb in earlier statements cited by the New York Times.
