Sam Altman backs cautious AI development, says OpenAI unlikely to go public in 2026

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has backed a more cautious approach to frontier AI development, citing safety and alignment concerns. He also indicated that OpenAI is unlikely to go public in 2026, saying significant work remains on AI safety.

New Delhi: OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has backed calls for a more cautious pace of artificial intelligence development amid growing concerns over AI safety and the possibility of losing control over increasingly powerful systems, while indicating that his company is unlikely to go public in 2026.

Hours after Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei called for a slower and more balanced approach to frontier AI development, Altman told Fortune Magazine Editor-in-Chief Alyson Shontell that taking OpenAI public at the current juncture would be ill-advised given the safety challenges facing the industry.

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“I actually think that, given everything happening with safety, right now would be an ill-advised moment to go public, and we don’t feel pressure on that,” Altman said in the interview.

Altman said OpenAI has significant work ahead on safety and alignment and indicated that an initial public offering could be pushed beyond 2026. “I would say not 2026. We got a lot of stuff to do, like meeting this moment of what is going to be required for safety and alignment, and how the industry and governments can work together,” he said.

The OpenAI chief stressed that the risks associated with increasingly capable AI systems are significant enough to require cooperation across the industry and between governments. He said companies need to ensure that commercial interests and individual egos do not come in the way of addressing the broader responsibilities associated with the technology.

“We all have a tremendous amount of responsibility, and cannot let egos or incentives for profit or anything else get in the way,” Altman said.

He also acknowledged that the AI industry has not yet made sufficient progress on key safety issues and argued that further advances in AI capabilities should be accompanied by improvements in monitorability and alignment.

“I don’t think we’re currently at a place where we could say, you know, push much further on capabilities without making more progress on monitorability, alignment, the ability to understand what a model is doing, and the ability to make sure that a model will follow human values and the intent of its users,” Altman said.