Sam Altman is on the charm offensive for AI

For the past year, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has been trying to convince the world that he can be trusted to lead the people to the next frontier of artificial intelligence.

Enter Oprah Winfrey.

In an interview with one of America’s most influential TV hosts, Altman made the case for why he can be trusted with a piece of technology that industry experts and lawmakers say could wipe out jobs, destabilize countries, and even cause humanity’s extinction.

The interview, which aired at 8 p.m. ET on Thursday, was part Winfrey’s hourlong TV special on ABC, “AI and the Future of US.” In it, she speaks to key figures of the tech industry, including Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates, about the impacts of AI. Winfrey also interviewed FBI Director Christopher Wary and the novelist Marilynne Robinson.

Throughout the interview, Altman could be seen listening intently to Winfrey’s simple but direct line of questioning.

One of the points Winfrey pressed Altman on was that of public trust.

“The bottom line for, I think, most people is whether or not you can trust the people who are in charge. And I know you went through a phase where your own board said, ‘We don’t trust you.’ And then you got yourself another board,” Winfrey said, referencing Altman’s brief ousting in 2023, which came with allegations that the CEO lied to his board.

“How do we know we can trust you?” Winfrey asked.

What followed wasn’t new answers from the CEO. Altman, who has previously been challenged on his commitment to AI safety, has already stressed the importance of transparency, keeping an open dialogue with the rest of the world, and delaying a product if deemed necessary.

But what was on full display was his charm: the careful pauses, the coy laugh, and the diplomatic answers intended to convey a sense of calm and understanding.

“So, the bar on this is clearly extremely high,” Altman said. “The best thing we can do is to put this technology in the hands of people, talk about what it is capable of, what it’s not, what we think is going to come, what we think might come, give our best advice about how society should decide to use this, say when we think it’s important to not release something, which we also might get wrong, and build up that trust over time. But it is clear that this is going to be a very impactful technology and I think a lot of scrutiny is thus super warranted.”

Winfrey also asked Altman how he feels about being billed “the most powerful and perhaps most dangerous man on the planet.”

“It’s definitely strange to hear you say that,” Altman said. “I don’t feel like the most powerful person or anything even close to say that.”

Winfrey, a veteran interviewer of almost four decades, challenged some of Altman’s responses.

“Just what we’ve seen thus far of people with nefarious ideas misusing it causes me a lot of concern,” she said. “And yet when I sit with you, you’re so calm, you’re so relatable. It seems like everything’s okay. Is that how you really feel?”

“I don’t want to give a false sense of security here,” Altman responded. “I’m tremendously excited for the good. I think the good will be incredible, but there will be bad too, and we’ll mitigate as much as we can. We have the whole field. But this technology will be misused, like every other technology before it. And we need to be clear-eyed about that, even though — even though I’m so convinced that the upside will be so tremendous.”

Altman also said in the interview that he communicates with someone in the government “every few days” to build out the guardrails for technology.

“One of the first things we need to do — and this is now happening — is to get the government to start figuring out how to do safety testing of these systems, like we do for aircraft or new medicines,” he said.

Altman’s interview with Winfrey aired the same day OpenAI announced its new product, Strawberry or OpenAI o1, a generative AI model that the company says can handle complex questions by using more human-like reasoning.

Since the debut of ChatGPT in 2022, OpenAI has become one of the most valuable startups in the world. Bloomberg reported Wednesday that the company is in talks to raise $6.5 billion in its next funding round, attracting juggernaut investors like Microsoft, Apple, and Nvidia. The funding would give OpenAI a $150 billion valuation.