Sam Altman admits AI industry fumbled communication as $130B in projects stall

Sam Altman says AI developers have fumbled at communicating the technology's benefits

The OpenAI chief executive told Bloomberg Television that AI developers have fumbled at communicating the technology's benefits, leaving them exposed to a backlash that stalled $130B of projects in one quarter, while European sites are being held up by grid queues and a reporting regime that runs on filed numbers Sam Altman says the AI industry has done a terrible job of communicating the benefits of the technology and is now exposed to a backlash, after local opposition blocked or delayed 75 data centre projects worth about $130B in a single quarter. In Europe the binding constraint is grid capacity, with Denmark holding roughly 60GW of queued projects against a 7GW peak demand. Sam Altman says the AI industry has done a terrible job of explaining what the technology is for. He told Bloomberg Television that the failure has left developers exposed to a growing backlash, Bloomberg reported. "I think we have done a bad job ourselves, maybe better than some others, worse than some others", the OpenAI chief executive said. People rightly get afraid when they feel AI leaders may not want them to have more power and autonomy, he added. The backlash has a figure attached. At least 75 data centre projects worth about $130B were blocked or delayed by local opposition in the first three months of this year. Data Center Watch compiled that count. The quarter came close to the total for all of 2025. Those are American projects. Calling it a communications failure is itself a communications strategy. The industry has been running a charm offensive to get these sites built. In Europe the obstacle is not sentiment. It is the grid, and the constraint is physical and measured. Denmark's operator Energinet paused grid connections in March. It was holding roughly 60GW of queued projects against a national peak demand of about 7GW. That is nearly nine times what the system carries. Danish data centre capacity stood at 398MW at the start of the year, with a further 208MW under construction. No amount of explaining creativity and entrepreneurship moves that ratio. The pause was set at three months while new prioritisation criteria were drafted. The European argument also runs on filed numbers rather than on persuasion. That was a deliberate choice, and the disclosure rule predates the current wave of projects. Since 2024, any data centre with at least 500kW of installed IT power demand has had to report its energy and sustainability performance into a European database. The Commission publishes what it collects. More is due this year. A data centre energy efficiency package and the Cloud and AI Development Act would tie public support to energy, water and circularity performance. Neither is law yet. Permission is also refused on the record here. Dublin turned down a Google data centre over energy concerns.

Sam Altman says OpenAI has 'done a bad job' at communicating

(Bloomberg) -- OpenAI Chief Executive Officer Sam Altman says top artificial intelligence developers have fumbled at communicating the benefits of the technology, leaving the industry vulnerable to growing backlash from communities around the world. "I think the industry has done a terrible job of this on the whole," Altman said in an interview with Bloomberg Television on Thursday. "I think we have done a bad job ourselves, maybe better than some others, worse than some others." Silicon Valley has confronted growing opposition to its plans for massive data centers to support AI. At least 75 data center projects, worth about $130 billion combined, were blocked or delayed by local opposition during the first three months of this year, according to research group Data Center Watch. That amount is near the total value of projects stalled by local resistance in all of 2025. Altman added that he thinks the AI industry has not "done a great job" talking about how the technology that companies are building could enable creativity and entrepreneurship. "It is very, very important to us that this technology is something where people get more power and more autonomy, not less," he said. "I think people rightly get afraid when they feel like AI leaders may not quite want that for them." At the same time, concerns have mounted around the cybersecurity abilities of OpenAI and other AI developers' most advanced models. An inadvertent hack carried out by OpenAI models on Hugging Face in July ignited concerns about AI agents running amok and prompted some technology and government leaders to renew calls for curbs on the technology. OpenAI said Thursday that it has rolled out a new generation of its technology called GPT-6 Astra to business users that are in its Daybreak program, which lets approved testers use its most capable models. OpenAI also plans to release a version of the AI model with added cybersecurity guardrails to its paid ChatGPT users. Both versions have safeguards to prevent users from accessing its most cutting-edge cybersecurity capabilities. OpenAI President Greg Brockman said in a briefing that he thinks the new model will one day be seen as the early stages of artificial general intelligence, referring to software that outperforms humans at a wide range of tasks. The concept has emerged as a central ambition for much of the AI industry, though there is no generally agreed-upon definition for AGI and many remain skeptical of it. -With assistance from Ed Ludlow. More stories like this are available on bloomberg.com