🧠 Sam Altman’s 3 AI Fears (Plus 1 More from me)

I stumbled upon this post by leadership expert Lolly Daskal, summarizing a recent talk from OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. In it, Altman named the three things that scare him most about AI – and they’re not theoretical musings or sci-fi paranoia. They’re happening. Now.

As a business coach that helps leaders build stronger companies and live better lives, I wanted to unpack them and offer up some implications. And I’m adding a fourth fear that’s missing from his list – but is hiding in plain sight.

1. AI-Powered Fraud

“Altman warns of a coming fraud crisis – deepfakes, synthetic voices, fake identities. AI is already outpacing the systems meant to catch bad actors. He specifically flagged how financial institutions still rely on voice authentication, which AI can now convincingly fake. We’ve built trust systems AI can now walk through.”

🔐 Takeaway: The very mechanisms we built to establish trust – signatures, photos, video, voices – are now liabilities. It’s no longer a question of “if” bad actors will exploit these cracks. They already are. For companies, that means rebuilding trust infrastructure from the ground up. Blockchain, zero-trust architecture, digital provenance – what was once fringe is now table stakes.

2. Emotional Overdependence

“He’s deeply concerned that people are becoming emotionally reliant on AI, especially young users, turning to ChatGPT not just for facts, but for life decisions – what to say, who to date, how to feel. In his words, ‘That’s bad and dangerous.’”

🧠 Takeaway: It’s not just students cheating on essays. It’s humans outsourcing their emotions. We’re teaching people to rely on machines for comfort, validation, and decision-making – without any critical feedback loop. The danger? We lose our capacity for discernment, for self-reflection, for human messiness. If empathy becomes a feature, what happens to our own?

3. Mass Job Disruption

“Altman predicts entire job categories like customer service will vanish. Completely. New roles may emerge – but not fast enough, and not for everyone. This isn’t about upskilling in theory. It’s about whether people can actually transition fast enough in practice.”

📉 Takeaway: Forget neat graphs showing “new jobs created” versus “old jobs lost.” The real story is in the whiplash. People won’t be reskilled fast enough. Entire segments of the workforce are at risk. Leaders must rethink org charts, talent pipelines, and what “value creation” really means. Human + AI is the new baseline. Period.

4. Hallucination (My Addition)

Not Altman’s – but it should be.

🤖 Takeaway: We’re not just emotionally dependent – we’re rationally dependent too. And that’s a problem when AI still hallucinates. It lies. Confidently. Believably. We must start treating AI like a very convincing intern with a caffeine problem: helpful, but not to be trusted blindly. Check the work. Maintain judgment. Don’t trade logic for speed.

So What Now?

As an EOS Implementer working with ambitious leadership teams, here’s what I’m telling my clients today:

✅ 1. Join ‘Em

You can’t beat AI. You’re not supposed to. Experiment. Play. Integrate. You don’t need to be a coder. But you doneed to be curious. Otherwise, you’re building a horse stable in the middle of the Tesla factory.

🔁 2. Augment, Don’t Replace

It’s not AI versus humans. It’s AI with humans – and the ones who understand this partnership will win. Your edge isn’t in doing everything – it’s in knowing what to let go, what to automate, and where to double down on uniquely human strengths like intuition, creativity, empathy, and leadership.

🧭 3. Use my Venn Diagram

Think in three buckets:

What AI does better: Automate it. Delegate it.
What both can do: Collaborate. Find leverage.
What only humans can do (for now): Elevate it.

But beware: that “uniquely human” list? Shrinking fast. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking your magic can’t be mimicked. It can. Just not yet.

Final Thought

Walt Disney once said: “If you can dream it, you can do it.”

In 2025? If you can dream it, AI will probably do it faster, cheaper, and with better lighting.

So I’ll ask you what I’m asking myself: What are your fears about AI? And what are you doing – personally and professionally – to meet them head-on?

Let’s start there.

I also created 10 key takeaways which are available exclusively to my Substack premium subscribers and my EOS Worldwide clients.