Sam Altman
Entrepreneur and investor who has served as CEO of OpenAI since 2019, leading the company behind ChatGPT and its research on artificial general intelligence.
“Like other industries, there will be a sort of multi-level thing. If you think about the auto industry, for example, if there's faulty parts, you can be liable in some ways there. If the car manufacturer puts them together in a way that's outside of the spec of what they're supposed to do, then the car manufacturer could be. And if someone's driving drunk, it's their fault. … I assume we'll have a new liability framework.”
Halftime Report · September 2026
Context
Asked whose fault it is if a startup builds an app on OpenAI and something goes badly wrong, Altman uses a car-industry analogy to describe layered responsibility between model makers, app builders and users.
Transcript
question on liability. So if something does go wrong, so say one of these startups here builds a great app using OpenAI and something goes terribly wrong. Whose fault is that?
The liability framework is being debated a lot in the world right now. I suspect,
like other industries, there will be a sort of multi-level thing. Like if you think about the auto industry, for example, if there's faulty parts, you can be liable in some ways there. If the car manufacturer puts them together in a way that's outside of the spec of what they're supposed to do, then the car manufacturer could be. And if someone's driving drunk, it's their fault. So depending on whether the fault is in the model and how it's used or someone misusing it intentionally, I assume we'll have a new liability framework. What is your
pitch today to developers? Cost seems like it's been a big theme for you guys, but what are you going to tell people on stage in terms of why OpenAI, why ChatGPT, in your mind, is the best option for these guys?
We have more than 20 announcements today, so we'll be throwing that. What's the
flavor ball? What are we going to
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