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Sam Altman, AI’s biggest star, sure hopes someone figures out how not to destroy humanity

Sam Altman, the PT Barnum of the AI industry, has a message for the folks concerned about the technology he’s dedicated his life to advancing: Don’t worry, the nerds are on it.

In the same interview Wednesday, the OpenAI CEO made some other hard-to-believe statements, like when he suggested that he isn’t motivated by the billions of dollars in equity he could get from the company — he just loves the work. And later, Altman also tried to tamp down speculation about his dramatic fallout with his OpenAI co-founder, Elon Musk, who has since founded his own AI company, xAI, and ascended to President-elect Donald Trump’s inner circle. When asked whether he was worried about Musk abusing his newfound influence and potentially shutting out competitors to xAI and his other tech businesses, Altman responded, quaintly, that he was not losing sleep over it.

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