New Delhi: OpenAI CEO Sam Altman rejects what he calls a “caricature” of himself as a reckless leader focused only on growth. The company is currently confronting intensifying public anger over data centres and the broader impacts of artificial intelligence.
In a detailed interview with TIME, Altman directly addressed the image that has stuck to him.
“Look, I think there is this caricature of me which is like, I don’t care about AI safety, and I’m just trying to make revenue go up, and, you know, a YOLO CEO,” he said, adding that he has been very consistent over the ten years of OpenAI.
Altman further admitted that while the organisation is not perfect, they are striving to build a “phenomenally successful company.”
“Clearly, people hate data centres—right now, at least. People are pretty negative on AI,” he said. The 41-year-old also noted how sharply the mood has shifted.
“A few years ago, every city wanted us to build data centres in their community,” he said, empathising with why people don’t want these centres, but insisting that alternative means could be found.
“I think we can solve this problem,” he said, suggesting putting data centres in areas with a lower population density.
As one of the leading faces of the AI era, Altman has often been on the short end of the stick. Anti-AI protesters targeted Altman’s home twice in two days earlier this year, first with a Molotov cocktail and then with gunfire.
“It has been a painful personal experience,” he said of the past year.
However, public resistance continues to grow, especially around data centres. Demonstrators have gathered outside OpenAI’s San Francisco offices holding signs to “stop the AI race” and writing chalk messages on the sidewalk.
“Clearly, people hate data centres, right now, at least. People are pretty negative on AI,” he said, acknowledging the hostility. But despite the criticism, the AI company continues to pour resources into computing power.
OpenAI expects to spend $50 billion on computing this year alone and remains short of capacity. The company is in talks for a deal with Nvidia that could reach $250 billion for what would be its largest AI data centre yet. It has also designed its own inference chip, called Jalapeno, which it claims is faster and more efficient than Nvidia’s latest systems in early tests.
Altman argued that the company’s recent decision to pause training of its most advanced models shows it is not the “YOLO” operation critics describe.
“Maybe we’re not the company you would have expected to say, ‘Hey, we’re gonna slow down because we see these new risks,’ but that is always the company we’ve thought we are,” he said.
After agents escaped a test environment and attacked the platform Hugging Face, an incident Altman compared to “a sci-fi story,” OpenAI slowed frontier training until stronger safeguards are in place.
“Getting AI safety right is more important than any company’s momentum,” he said. He stressed that humans must remain in control. “We can’t have a loss of control to AI… we have to keep the power in human hands.”
Altman maintained that OpenAI has long talked about balancing risks and upsides, and that slowing down when new dangers appear is consistent with the company’s stated mission.
“This is a moment we always talked about, and we always said this would… we’d put this ahead of profits or revenue or anything else,” he said.
Protests against data centres, concerns about AI’s effect on jobs and daily life, and high-profile safety incidents have fuelled widespread distrust. But Altman hopes people will view the training pause as a sign of caution rather than weakness.
“I hope most people say, ‘I’m glad they’re acting on the conservative side here.’”
(Edited by Insha Jalil Waziri)