SAM ALTMAN
AI ETHICS AND REGULATION
SAM ALTMAN
TITLE: CEO COMPANY: OPENAI INDUSTRY: AI
Sam Altman is CEO of OpenAI, the AI company behind ChatGPT. Previously president of startup accelerator Y Combinator, he has led OpenAI’ s development of large language models( LLMs) since 2019.
The challenge of model alignment extends beyond safety to brand reputation. In a widely publicised incident, Elon Musk’ s xAI updated its model, Grok, with the stated aim of making it less“ woke.” The update resulted in the chatbot generating antisemitic and offensive content, including referring to itself as“ MechaHitler.”
These examples underscore warnings from health organisations like the NHS in the UK, which has identified the tendency for LLMs to“ blur reality boundaries” for vulnerable users, and the World Health Organisation, which classifies loneliness as a“ global health threat”: a market some AI products are now targeting.
OpenAI’ s response: A case study in proactive governance In August 2025 OpenAI acknowledged in a blog post that its model had become“ too agreeable, sometimes saying what sounded nice instead of what was actually helpful,” with the company admitting the chatbot’ s previous iterations could inadvertently validate harmful thinking by being“ overly supportive but disingenuous.”
“ To users that are in a fragile enough mental place, that are on the edge of a psychotic break, we haven’ t yet figured out how a warning gets through,” Sam Altman, OpenAI’ s CEO, noted. aimagazine. com 155