AI Leader Says Omnipresent Form Of Media Is So Dangerous He Doesn’t Even Want His Kids Near It
Leading artificial intelligence executive Sam Altman warned that he would not let his own children use short-form content because of its effects on young minds.
Leading artificial intelligence executive Sam Altman warned that he would not let his own children use short-form content because of its effects on young minds.
The OpenAI CEO said short-form video is “dangerous” and he does not want his kids watching it during an on-stage interview at Salesforce’s Dreamforce conference in San Francisco on Tuesday. Altman made the remarks after being asked what AI companies should learn from social media’s toll on young people — the issue at the center of Meta’s roughly $17.1 billion settlement on Aug. 26 with states that accused the company of addicting teens to its apps.
“I think we’re going to stay in an extremely human- centric world no matter how good technology gets, and I think one of the things I didn’t like about social media is, I think, it pushed us a little bit more away,” Altman told Salesforce CEO and chairman Marc Benioff at the conference.
Social media has not been “only positive” for society, especially when looking at the effects on young people, the OpenAI CEO said. He argued that social media companies shouldn’t shoulder the blame for all of society’s problems, but he would have managed the companies differently.
“I happen to like short for video … but I wouldn’t let my kids near that stuff,” Altman said at the conference. “I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect kids to be able to resist that dopamine thing or know that they even should.”
“I don’t think short-form video is inherently evil, but I do think it’s dangerous,” he added.
OpenAI did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
“Some degree of accidents are unavoidable with new technology across the industry,” Altman said.
However, the industry can build AI safely if it keeps safety ahead of new capabilities and learns from incidents similarly to the aviation industry, he explained.
The CEO agreed with Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei’s call to pace AI development on Monday
One plan to curb these negative social media effects was revealed on Monday.
The European Commission is preparing to introduce the EU Kids Act, which would set age-based limits on children’s social media use. Politico reported. Under this proposal, children would be restricted from creating social media accounts until age 15.
OpenAI discontinued its own Tiktok-style app, Sora, in April 2026, Axios reported. The platform allowed users to share short AI-generated videos and launched in September 2025.
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