Altman says AI industry can handle safety risks, calls for transparent incident reporting

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said on Tuesday that he is confident the AI industry can advance the technology safely without causing major harm, while expressing disappointment with how the topic is being covered in the media.

Speaking at Salesforce's Dreamforce conference in San Francisco alongside Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, Altman said: "I have a lot of confidence in our ability, our company and the industry, to advance this technology safely." He acknowledged that the world is right to be fearful, and that "a certain level of accidents is unavoidable" as new technologies develop.

Altman pointed to the aviation industry as a model, noting that flight safety has been built on a culture of incident reporting, accumulated experience, and federal oversight. He called on the AI industry to adopt a similar culture of transparent incident reporting.

He also said companies should be prepared to "slow down or even stop" if they reach a point where they cannot continue advancing safely, a stance that echoes recent calls from Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei to slow the pace of AI development.

Altman described the current phase of AI as a "third wave" following chatbots and coding agents, in which AI will be able to actively take over work tasks. He said the industry has only begun to scratch the surface of building products that genuinely make people more capable, but added that inertia in human work patterns means widespread adoption will still take years.