Sam Altman: “The world should trust” us on AI safety

By Rachyl Jones Tech Reporter Published Sep. 16, 2026 at 6:00am Share Share Copy link to this article Email (opens in new tab) Twitter (opens in new tab) Bluesky (opens in new tab) Facebook (opens in new tab) LinkedIn (opens in new tab) Telegram (opens in new tab) WhatsApp (opens in new tab) Reddit (opens in new tab) Close share menu 2 There are $ 2 comments on this story Published Sep. 16, 2026 at 6:00am After a week of warnings from AI workers, experts, and executives that the technology has the potential to end the world (opens in new tab) , OpenAI CEO Sam Altman tried out a toned-down message: Trust us. “The world should trust that we are going to do the right thing because it’s the right thing, and because we feel the magnitude of this,” he said Tuesday at the Dreamforce conference in San Francisco. Altman’s appearance at Dreamforce, an annual event drawing business executives and tech workers, seemed like an attempt to turn down the temperature on recent AI safety rhetoric. The debate escalated online last week after Anthropic employee Jacob Coxon quit and accused OpenAI and Anthropic of “gambling” with people’s lives. Over the weekend, Altman posted on X that he agreed with Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei’s call to “pace the frontier” — or slow the development of the most advanced AI to work on making the models act more in line with human values and ethics. He joined a chorus of like-minded AI chief executives, including Elon Musk and DeepMind’s Demis Hassabis. ADVERTISEMENT OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, left, sits with Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff for a conversation at Salesforce’s Dreamforce conference at the Moscone Center on September 15, 2026. | Source: Benjamin Fanjoy/Getty Images AI researchers have been warning about the dangers of the technology for decades, but this time, the message broke out of the tech bubble. Coxon’s post (opens in new tab) reached 170 million accounts on X. The debate has drawn responses from global leaders, including President Donald Trump, and left those less familiar with the technology scrambling (opens in new tab) for answers (opens in new tab) . “We will get it right, by the way,” Altman said at the Dreamforce conference. “I am very confident in our company’s ability, our industry’s ability, to do this safely.” More about AI Is Eating SF Promiscuous Claude stuns in new AI billboard AI CEOs say the end is near. The people who work next door say chill out They liked being named Al. Then came AI Altman wasn’t the only executive to turn down the volume on AI warnings. Earlier at the same event, Amodei said: “Even if we freeze the technology in place … we’re making use of only 5% or 10% of what the possible value of the technology is.” Amodei has long been one of the loudest voices on AI safety. His company is expected to go public this year with a $2 trillion valuation. “The fraction of people who have seen [what] is possible is still small compared to those who gain utility from it,” he said onstage in front of 10,000 attendees, adding that he hopes to acquire many more customers. The message struck a more hopeful tone than the 3,800-word manifesto (opens in new tab) he published Saturday, in which he said that AI “could outrun our ability to understand and control these systems” and that within a year, a swarm of AI agents “could be capable of taking over the entire internet.” Listen to The Standard Podcasts Life in Seven Songs Tuesday, Sept. 24 Five things we learned from our bare-all interview with Sam Altman Listen Select Your Platform Close Apple Podcasts (opens in new tab) Spotify (opens in new tab) Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang was also onstage at Dreamforce, but his more matter-of-fact position on AI safety stood apart from those of Altman and Amodei. Huang — who has long noted (opens in new tab) that doomsday fears have “done a lot of damage” — said Tuesday, “If we’re not confident about the safety of the products … then don’t release it. That’s a very obvious thing.” Both Altman and Amodei have recently doubled down (opens in new tab) on their requests for AI regulation from lawmakers, as well as oversight from independent third-party safety groups. “The market forces are already there,” said Huang. “We don’t need new laws or new regulations.” Critics have accused the executives of manufacturing the crisis to produce favorable legislation, boost their IPO prices, or force competitors to slow down. Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff echoed Huang’s sentiment. “We don’t know everything going on in their company,” he said at a press briefing. “If they feel like they should slow down, then they should slow down.” Copy link to this article (opens in new tab) (opens in new tab) (opens in new tab) (opens in new tab)