Sam Altman Reverses on AI CEO, Says People Want Human Accountability

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said he no longer believes the market would accept an artificial intelligence model as a chief executive. In an interview published Tuesday on the podcast "Invest Like The Best," Altman said the world wants to know who is responsible for a company's decisions and who can be held accountable for bad ones.

"I think for my job, for example, I think the world wants to know about the person that's going to be responsible for the decisions of a company, and who they're going to hold accountable if they make bad ones, and they don't really want an AI CEO," Altman said.

The statement marks a sharp reversal from his position last November. In a separate interview on the "Conversations with Tyler" podcast, Altman said it would be a failure if another company beat OpenAI to replacing its CEO with an AI. "Shame on me if OpenAI is not the first big company run by an AI CEO," he said at the time. He did not address the reversal in the new interview.

Altman also said AI has not upended the economy to the extent he originally expected. People still prefer dealing with humans, he said. "You can go hire an AI consultant right now, or talk to an AI sales rep right now, or hire an AI engineer or whatever – somehow most people seem to still really prefer interacting with a human."