‘It’s clearly not working’: Sam Altman slams AI industry for political spending

CEO of OpenAI Sam Altman admits “something is clearly wrong” with the artificial intelligence money that flooded the midterm elections – and he doesn’t expect the president that of Donald Trump rebranding the technology to improve its industry’s image among the American public.

“I understand why AI has a really negative perception right now” Altmann said Brendan Bordelon in an exclusive interview marking the launch of Decrypted by POLITICO. “I don’t think spending money on politics is what’s going to make people feel better. The industry needs to find a way to address real concerns, and right now a lot of people in the industry are pretty tone-deaf.”

In the vast conversation, Altmann offered a window into how OpenAI is coping with new political pressures and intensifying competition with Anthropic, its corporate rival led by a former employee Dario Amodei.

Altmann says OpenAI is more tolerant than Anthropic of less than catastrophic damage of AI, highlighting what he sees as a fundamental divide in worldview between the two leading labs, even as they converge on stricter rules following high-profile autonomous hacking incidents.