OpenAI CEO Sam Altman told Politico’s new Decoded newsletter that “the world should accept some bad things happening” for AI’s benefits. The remarks came days after OpenAI fired three researchers and its safety-report lead resigned. The sentence has a subject, and it is “the world”. Altman’s own “We believe” sits in front of it, then hands the decision to everyone. The harm has no doer at all: “bad things happening” is weather, not work. A plain sentence would say that OpenAI’s products will cause some harms and OpenAI judges the trade worth it. Forbes came closer with “AI Will Cause”, yet even there the cause is the machine, not its maker. The tell: when harm happens in a sentence about something a company sells, look for the verb that lost its owner. Set the line beside the week. OpenAI fired Jasmine Wang, Tomek Korbak and Mikita Balesni for allegedly sharing confidential information with an outside AI-safety group; its stated reason was “violating our policies”. The three have not commented, and OpenAI has not named the group. David Robinson, who led the safety reports for its launches, resigned and argued in The Atlantic that its culture is broken. OpenAI itself announced it had alerted more than 100 organizations to “misaligned agent activity”. California subpoenaed OpenAI; the FTC opened an inquiry. The pages carry more than the headlines. Altman also said the world should not accept the worst risks, such as a serious loss of control, and told Fortune “I believe no lab has solved alignment.” That is a fuller position than “some bad things” alone. The coverage around him still leans toward acceptance: Vanity Fair welcomes the age “For Better Or Worse” and Fortune calls the firings “awkward”. You are asked to sign the vow before reading the list.
