OpenAI chief Sam Altman says the world should accept some risks from artificial intelligence in exchange for its benefits. He argued the technology must stay broadly accessible.

“We believe that the world should accept some bad things happening for the benefits of this technology and people having the agency,” Altman told Politico’s Decoded newsletter in an interview published October 4.

Altman said there is “a lot of daylight” between OpenAI and rival Anthropic on regulation. He rejected the idea of concentrating AI in one lab as a “completely unacceptable trade-off.”

He backed a lighter-touch regulatory stance. People will do “tremendously, orders of magnitude more, good stuff than bad stuff,” he said.

The remarks land amid a fierce industry debate. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei urged the industry in September to slow down and “pace the frontier.” An Anthropic researcher quit, warning the technology could prove catastrophic.

US regulators are also circling. The FTC opened a probe into AI labs in September, and California’s attorney general subpoenaed OpenAI over agent safety incidents.