“I think there’s a lot of daylight,” Altman told Decoded co-author and POLITICO senior tech reporter Brendan Bordelon. Asked specifically where he diverges from Anthropic and its CEO Dario Amodei, Altman said, “we believe that the world should accept some bad things happening for the benefits of this technology and people having the agency.”

Anthropic has long been viewed as the strongest proponent of AI regulations within the industry, a stance that until recently was at odds with the lighter-touch approach favored by OpenAI. But the policy differences between the two leading AI firms have narrowed in recent months, with OpenAI backing tougher rules as it grapples with high-profile hacking incidents and rogue behavior by its models.

Altman agreed with Amodei’s call last month to slow the development of the most advanced AI models. His company has followed Anthropic in endorsing new state laws that impose stricter safety requirements than what the maker of ChatGPT had previously supported — a subtle shift from its prior state strategy. And OpenAI lobbyists recently endorsed a bipartisan House proposal that would require top AI companies to embed outside safety evaluators.

Despite the convergence, Altman tried to distinguish his firm’s regulatory stance from Anthropic’s, referencing a criticism about regulatory capture that tech advisers close to President Donald Trump have applied to Anthropic.

“I disagree, but I understand the perspective of people who are like, ‘This technology is going to get so powerful, and it’s so dangerous, that a single lab in San Francisco should have it and make sure nothing bad happens, and kind of figure out how to dole out the benefits,’” said Altman. He called it “a completely unacceptable trade-off” that runs counter to the “lighter-touch regulatory stance” backed by OpenAI.

“I wouldn’t take a trade of saying, ‘We’ll make sure there’s no major hacks, there’s no misuse of this technology, there’s zero scams, there’s zero all the other bad things that will happen,’” said Altman. “Because I think people will do tremendously — orders of magnitude more — good stuff than bad stuff.”

The OpenAI CEO later added that he does not accept “the really catastrophic risks,” including the potential for “a serious loss of control to AI.”

Asked to respond, an Anthropic spokesperson said that its “regulatory proposals apply only to frontier models.” The company also referred to an August social media exchange that Amodei had with an investment manager, addressing criticisms around regulatory capture and impacts on smaller companies.

“Anthropic has always made its policy proposals very carefully,” Amodei said at the time. “We try very hard to make proposals that disadvantage (slow down) frontier AI companies while advantaging smaller competitors.”

The Altman interview, appearing in Monday’s debut edition of Decoded and its accompanying daily podcast, also delved into Trump’s new AI accord with top tech firms and his attempted “superintelligence” rebrand; the rash of autonomous hacking incidents carried out by OpenAI models and whether the company should face legal liability; Altman’s thoughts on the AI industry money swamping U.S. politics; the influence of so-called effective altruists inside OpenAI; and his views on key political power players including French President Emmanuel Macron and California Gov. Gavin Newsom.

Decoded by POLITICO — produced by Brendan, Christine Mui, Calder McHugh and Sam Sutton — draws on the reporting of some 50 POLITICO journalists around the world to cover not just where tech is going, but the personalities, policy fights and political battles taking it there. Subscribe to the newsletter and to the podcast.