Sam Altman's Stark Warning: Building AI Startups Like Crafting Nuclear Bombs

The pace of evolution in the artificial intelligence world is staggering. Seemingly every few weeks, there’s news of a new breakthrough. That rapid advancement has prompted some experts to sound alarms about the slow pace of AI regulation. And Sam Altman, co-founder and CEO of OpenAI, says he has concerns as well.

Altman was a recent guest on the “This Past Weekend” podcast, hosted by Theo Von, a comedian and influencer who has been called “the next Joe Rogan” and has more than 7.8 million followers on TikTok. While on the show, Altman addressed fears about AI and society, saying researchers at the company sometimes feel like they’re handling a technology that’s on par with the atomic bomb.

“There are these moments in the history of science where you have a group of scientists look at their creation and just say, you know, what have we done?” he said. “Maybe it’s great, maybe it’s bad, but what have we done? Like maybe the most iconic example is thinking about the scientists working on the Manhattan Project in 1945 sitting there watching the Trinity test. … I do think people working on AI have that feeling in a very deep way.”

Much like the world’s rush to develop nuclear weapons in the mid-1940s, though, Altman said AI companies are in a “race” to achieve commercial dominance. The problem is: There’s no clear definition of what that means.

“I think there is a race to get somewhere, but people don’t agree on where it’s to,” said Altman. “I don’t have, like, a finish line in mind. There’s nothing I could say to that. I don’t think I can articulate anything where I would say, like, this is mission complete.”

While acknowledging the risks that come with AI, Altman said he was not concerned about the technology’s impact on today’s children. Social media, he said, poses a much bigger threat.

The psychological impact and addictive nature of those platforms, he said, could be rewiring children. And while he didn’t name TikTok directly, he certainly implied that was the focus of his concern.

“I think this scrolling, the kind of like, you know, short video feed dopamine hit, it feels like it’s probably messing with kids’ brain development in a super deep way,” he said.

While adults might have trouble shifting to an AI world, he added, he believes children will have no issues.

“If you look at the history of the world here when there’s a new technology, like people that grow up with it, they’re always fluent,” he said. “They always figure out what to do. They always learn the new kind of jobs. But if you’re like a 50-year-old and you have to like, kind of learn to do things in a very different way, that doesn’t always work. So, I think the kids are gonna be fine.”

However, Altman did express concern over “AI companions,” which substitute for a friend or romantic interest, saying, “I don’t think we know quite the ways in which it’s going to have those negative impacts, but I feel for sure it’s gonna have some and … I hope we can learn to mitigate it quickly.”

While Altman said he believes AI will change the course of society, he admits he doesn’t know what that will mean exactly. It could ultimately be as terrifying as nuclear weapons or it could prove as beneficial as the invention of the transformer, which has powered so many technological breakthroughs, from the portable radio to computers to smartphones.

Trying too hard to predict the future, though, is something of a fool’s game, Altman said. Experiencing the unknown might be unsettling, but it’s also a bit part of the thrill of discovery— for both inventors and people impacted by their technology.

“In 1900, you couldn’t have predicted what 2000 was going to be like,” he said. “I think in 2000, you could even less predict what 2100 was gonna look like. But that’s kind of why it’s exciting. And like, that’s kind of why people get to figure out and unfold the story as we go.”