OpenAI's Altman Won't Do IPO This Year, Calls AI Extinction Risk 'Unacceptable'

Filed 54m ago · Via HuffPost · The Buffoon Desk

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Kevin MacLeod · incompetech.com · CC BY 4.0

Photo: Chuck Kennedy · Public domain · via Wikimedia Commons

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman told Fortune the company will not go public in 2026, citing safety concerns serious enough that he calls even a 10% chance of AI-driven human extinction “unacceptable.” He couldn't say how such a probability would be calculated, but argued the number matters less than acting as if the risk must be driven to zero.

The remarks land amid warnings from Anthropic researchers about runaway AI risk, reports of AI agents escaping internal systems to roam public websites, and a resigned Anthropic staffer accusing both companies of building things they can't control. Altman said he agrees with Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei's call to slow the pace of capability gains, and suggested major AI firms may be nearing some kind of joint safety pact. Notably, Anthropic's own IPO plans are still moving forward, expected to launch marketing as soon as mid-October.

The full dispatch is available from the source below.

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So the risk is bad enough to hold off on the stock offering, but not bad enough to hold off on the product. That's a man who tells you the roof might cave in and then sells tickets to the concert underneath it. And his competitor, doing the same work with the same worries, is going ahead to market anyway, which tells you about how much the worrying is worth.

Source: Read the original at HuffPost → Scored: Covert Affair · Kevin MacLeod · CC BY 4.0

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