OpenAI CEO Sam Altman says AI 'will reshape the material conditions of human life'

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman says his industry is already like something out of a work of fiction. “Evidence of AI’s economic value, importance to national security and acceleration of scientific discovery is becoming clear,” Altman wrote in an op-ed published by the Financial Times. “In another year or two, we expect to have built systems with astonishing power, capable of delivering tremendous value to the world.” Altman said that AI systems that would have recently been called “science fiction” are already in place and will continue to change the world. “Artificial intelligence will reshape the material conditions of human life on a scale that no technology has accomplished since the harnessing of electricity, and perhaps beyond even that,” he wrote.

Altman’s words come at a critical moment for the nascent technology, a turning point that the OpenAI CEO said requires a global AI framework.

Altman’s proposal, which comes on the heels of his recent conversations with world leaders and fellow tech executives at the G7 conference in France, is the establishment of “a US-led international forum.” The organization, which Altman said might include representatives from government, independent technical experts, and others, would establish standards for the AI industry and make “the technology available to nations and companies that participate and follow the rules.” “It could also serve as a governance mechanism over the labs, and guard against the commercial pressures that can lead to unsafe racing,” he wrote.

Most importantly, Altman stressed that unless the world sets a sweeping standard together, individual countries will have outsized influence. “International cooperation like this seems a reasonable way to avoid power becoming too concentrated, and ensure that the benefits of AI are democratised,” he wrote.

Altman did not explicitly mention the US government’s request, which OpenAI agreed to, to initially limit the release of GPT-5.6 Sol, Terra, and Luna to a group of “trusted partners” whose names were shared in advance with the government.

But in a statement announcing the decision, OpenAI said such limited releases should not “become the long-term default.” The Trump administration’s request also looms large as OpenAI approaches an IPO.

The request followed even more heated face-off between the Commerce Department and Anthropic, which led the Trump administration to briefly impose export controls on OpenAI’s rival.

Altman said that the AI industry can look to established regulatory bodies for inspiration.

Altman named-checked the International Atomic Energy Agency, an organization with the United Nations umbrella, that monitors global nuclear energy development and verifies countries aren’t trying to obtain nuclear weapons. “Even during times of immense international turmoil this co-operation has been possible; the IAEA for instance came into being in the early days of the cold war,” Altman wrote.

In a recent essay, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, who has a famously contentious relationship with his one-time colleague Altman, called for AI regulations to mirror the Federal Aviation Administration.

Amodei went further than Altman in explicitly advocating for the federal government to have the power to stop the release of an AI model if third-party testing shows it would present “unacceptable risks.” “There may come a time, perhaps relatively soon, when we need to go beyond this, when the most powerful AI systems look less like airplanes or automobiles and more like weaponizable nuclear materials—a threat to humanity rather than ‘just’ a threat to public safety,” Amodei wrote. “If that occurs, we may need more aggressive regulatory measures than those I have laid out.”