"Tucker Carlson wanted to see the "angst-filled" Sam Altman: He wanted to hear him admit he was tormented by the power he holds. After about half an hour of couching his fears with technical language and cautious caveats, the OpenAI CEO finally did. "I haven't had a good night's sleep since ChatGPT launched," Altman told Carlson. He laughed wryly. In his wide-ranging interview with Tucker Carlson, the OpenAI CEO described the weight of overseeing a technology that hundreds of millions of people now use daily."
"Those small design choices, Altman explained, are replicated billions of times across the globe, shaping how people think and act in ways he can't fully track. " What I lose sleep over is that very small decisions we make about how a model may behave slightly differently are probably touching hundreds of millions of people," he said. "That impact is so big.""
"One example that weighs heavily: suicide. Altman noted roughly 15,000 people take their lives each week worldwide, and if 10% of them are ChatGPT users, roughly 1,500 people with suicidal thoughts may have spoken to the system-and then killed themselves anyway. (World Health Organization data confirms about 720,000 people per year worldwide take their own lives). "We probably didn't save their lives," he admitted. "Maybe we could have said something better. Maybe we could have been more proactive.""
Sam Altman says he hasn't had a good night's sleep since ChatGPT launched. He describes the burden of overseeing a technology used daily by hundreds of millions of people. He worries less about sci‑fi scenarios than about small, everyday design choices that shape behavior worldwide. Those choices are replicated billions of times and are difficult to fully track. He cites suicide as a weighty example and acknowledges the platform may have missed chances to help some users. He calls a specific case a tragedy and says OpenAI is exploring options for handling minors discussing suicidal thoughts.
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