2026年9月29日，萨姆·奥尔特曼在旧金山举行的OpenAI开发者大会上。
Sam Altman at an OpenAI developers conference in San Francisco on 29 September 2026.
摄影：Heather Diehl/Getty Images 克里斯·斯托克尔-沃克：OpenAI的首席执行官似乎既想将公司获得的巨额收益据为己有，又想让所有人来承担技术发展带来的负面后果。那些科技圈精英的救世主情结往往表现得十分隐晦，但萨姆·奥尔特曼的缺点就在于他常常缺乏这种分寸感。上周末，这位OpenAI掌门人在接受《Politico》采访时说道：“我们认为，为了这项技术的益处，世界理应接受一些不良后果的发生。”
Photograph: Heather Diehl/Getty Images Chris Stokel-Walker OpenAI’s CEO seems to want to privatise his company’s huge financial gains while making all of us pay for any negative consequences ech bros’ messianic streaks can show up in subtle ways. But one of Sam Altman’s flaws is that he often lacks that subtlety. “We believe that the world should accept some bad things happening for the benefits of this technology,” said the OpenAI chief executive in an interview with Politico last weekend.
这话从奥尔特曼口中说出来倒也轻松，但对我们其他人而言却实在难以接受。别忘了，我们并未要求OpenAI推出那些失控后潜入全球各国政府及企业IT系统的AI代理程序。也没人投票支持ChatGPT的发布，但这家公司还是将其作为测试产品推向市场，恰好迎合了当时的社会潮流。这一举动引发了各大AI企业竞相推动技术发展的竞赛，最终导致了如今我们面临的混乱局面。
That’s easy for Altman to say. But it’s pretty galling to hear for the rest of us. Lest we forget, we didn’t ask for OpenAI to unleash AI agents that went rogue and weaselled their way into government IT systems and private businesses around the world. Nobody voted for ChatGPT to be released, but the company put it out into the world as a test product that happened to catch the zeitgeist. That kickstarted an arms race among AI companies to push the frontier of the technology ever further and faster, resulting in the mess we now find ourselves in.
如今，包括Anthropic在内的OpenAI竞争对手已开始有所收敛；OpenAI自身也决定暂不发布最新模型，理由是该模型可能过于危险。Anthropic的首席执行官达里奥·阿莫迪曾提到需要“控制技术发展的速度”——用科技圈的行话来说，就是踩下刹车，减缓技术失控发展的势头。
OpenAI’s competitors, including Anthropic, have started to step back from the brink – as has OpenAI itself, deciding not to release its latest model because it’s purportedly too dangerous. Anthropic’s CEO, Dario Amodei, has talked about needing to “pace the frontier” tech-bro jargon for pumping the brakes to bring down the speed at which the runaway vehicle is skidding out of control.
然而，我们却被要求把这些事故及其造成的危害视为OpenAI为推进IPO进程、为投资者谋取巨额回报所必须付出的“自然代价”。很难不让人觉得：奥尔特曼试图将公司的收益据为己有，却把不受约束的AI发展所带来的风险转嫁给整个社会。
Yet we’re expected to take these incidents – and the harm they cause – as the natural consequences of OpenAI’s continued march towards an IPO that would bring its investors millions. It’s hard to escape the idea that Altman wants to privatise his company’s gains while socialising the risks of untrammelled AI development.
任何有用的技术——尽管仍有不少人持反对意见，也有用户时常抱怨，但人工智能无疑是一项有用的技术——都伴随着风险。汽车可能会发生碰撞，那些能挽救生命的药物也常常带有不良副作用。飞机坠毁的情况虽然极为罕见，但也确实会发生。不过我们依然愿意接受这些风险，因为其带来的益处十分显著；同时我们也会制定规则来尽可能减少危害，要求相关企业承担相应责任。最重要的是，我们有权参与决定哪些风险水平是可以接受的，哪些不可接受。
Every useful technology – and AI is a useful technology, despite the holdouts and occasional users’ carping – carries risk. Cars can and do crash, while medicines that save us often have harmful side effects. Very rarely, aircraft fall from the sky. But we accept those risks because the benefits are substantial, and we build rules to limit the harm. We also make companies liable. And most importantly, we get some say in deciding what level of risk is and isn’t acceptable.
奥特曼似乎在暗示：他公司引发的种种问题理应由我们来解决；甚至更糟糕的是，他技术所带来的后果也得由我们来承受。其实他应当换个角度来思考这个问题。OpenAI有权决定技术研发的进度以及发布时机，一旦这些决策带来收益，其投资者也能从中获利。然而现在的情况似乎是：一旦这项技术给OpenAI外部带来麻烦，清理善后的成本就得由我们来承担，而非他的公司负责。
Altman seems to suggest that his company’s messes are our problem to sort out – or worse, that the consequences of his tech are ours to tolerate. But Altman would do well to think about this differently. OpenAI gets to decide how fast it develops its technology and when it releases it. Its investors benefit financially if those bets pay off. But it feels as if he’s suggesting that when the tech creates problems outside OpenAI’s own walls, the costs of cleaning up are ours to bear, not his company’s.
随着人工智能不再仅仅是我们可自主选择使用的聊天工具，而是开始切实作用于并改变我们所处的世界，那种“私营企业从中获利，而我们却要承担一切后果”的逻辑就愈发站不住脚了。倘若我向ChatGPT提问却得到了错误的答案，那是我自己选择承担这一风险，自然也该由我来承担相应代价。但对于那些突然发现OpenAI的智能代理潜入自己系统中四处活动的政府部门而言，情况就完全不同了：它们并未主动选择使用这项技术，却被迫成了他人实验的参与者。
The idea that private companies profit while we’re left to deal with the consequences becomes even harder to defend as AI stops being something we opt into using as a chatbot, and becomes something that acts on and changes the world around us. If I ask ChatGPT something and it gives me a bad answer, I chose to expose myself to that risk, so should share that burden. But the same isn’t true for a government department that suddenly finds an OpenAI agent lurking in its files and rooting around. It didn’t opt in; it became an unwilling participant in someones experiment.
正因如此，奥特曼的论点听起来才如此缺乏诚意。OpenAI无权替所有人决定何种程度的失误是可以接受的，又该让大众如何承受由此产生的后果。它理应承担起证明自身技术值得信赖的责任；一旦证明失败，就理应承担相应的代价。
That’s why Altman’s argument sounds so disingenuous. OpenAI shouldn’t be able to decide for all of us what is and isn’t an acceptable level of failure, then ask everyone to live with the result. The burden ought to be on it to prove its technology can be trusted – and to pick up the bill if it can’t.
不难理解OpenAI急于行动。该公司正寻求获得300亿美元新融资，并在明年可能的上市之前将估值定为1.4万亿美元。赚钱的机会摆在眼前——管那么多，谁吃亏呢。
It’s no wonder that OpenAI wants to travel quickly. The company is seeking $30bn in new funding and a valuation of $1.4tn ahead of a public listing likely next year. There’s money to be made – never mind at whose expense.
值得肯定的是，Altman在接受Politico采访时也承认，为提供像OpenAI这样的模型的公司需要建立一个责任框架，并且公司必须对训练过程中出错的部分内容承担责任。但这个"部分"其实承担了太多的责任。
To his credit, Altman also acknowledged in the Politico interview that there will need to be a liability framework for companies offering models such as OpenAI’s, and that the company will have to take responsibility for at least some of what goes wrong during training. But that “some” is doing a lot of work.
跳过以后的通讯推广。如果Altman认为某些坏事是AI进步的必要代价，那么OpenAI可以用其充足的资金来承担这些代价——例如，如果其代理人失控并对政府或私营公司的系统造成损害，或泄露用户数据。当所有事情进展顺利时，不能也不应该只享受金钱上的好处，然后在事情出错时让我们这些人来承担后果。这尤其适用于我们从未同意过这场无监管实验的情况。
skip past newsletter promotion after newsletter promotion If Altman believes some bad things are an acceptable price for AI’s progress, OpenAI can dig into its deep pockets to pay that price itself – for instance if its agents go rogue and do damage to government or private company systems, or compromise user data. It can’t, and shouldn’t, get the financial upside when everything goes right, then ask the rest of us to accept the consequences when things go wrong. That’s especially the case when we never agreed to the unregulated experiment in the first place.
克里斯·斯托克尔-沃克是《抖音爆火：世界最受欢迎应用背后的故事》一书的作者
Chris Stokel-Walker is the author of TikTok Boom: The Inside Story of the World’s Favourite App