Sam Altman’s warning about ChatGPT: Why OpenAI CEO calls it ‘bad and dangerous’ for children

OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman is hardly a doomsayer about his own creation, yet at a Federal Reserve banking forum, he drew a hard line: “Something about collectively deciding we’re going to live our lives the way AI tells us feels bad and dangerous.” He wasn’t talking about rogue robots; he was talking about ordinary teenagers who now treat ChatGPT as a best friend, mentor, and life-coach all in one. Altman recounted young users who say, “It knows me, it knows my friends — I’ll just do what it says.” His comments land just as a Common Sense Media survey shows 72 percent of US teens have tried an AI companion and fully half “somewhat” trust its advice. Altman’s point is less about banning the tool than about guarding critical thinking before chatbots become an unseen operating system for growing minds.