'People will buy intelligence from us on a meter': ChatGPT's CEO, Sam Altman, has critics worried with his AI vision
Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, envisions a future where intelligence is sold like a utility, similar to electricity or water. This perspective has sparked debate about the implications of AI becoming a foundational infrastructure in daily life. Critics express concerns over the potential control and accessibility of such a system.
- ▪Sam Altman stated that OpenAI aims to sell intelligence on a meter, likening it to utilities.
- ▪The analogy suggests a future where AI is integrated into everyday life as a basic service.
- ▪Critics are worried about the dystopian implications of centralized control over intelligence.
2 outlets in our directory ran this story, first to last over 3 hours. All of the coverage we found sits in one bucket: centre. That one-sidedness is itself worth noticing.
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Story provenance
Attribution is not the same as permission. This drawer separates discovery metadata, excerpts, WeSearch-generated summaries, reuse status, and whether the publisher receives the visit. Nothing here claims a legal grant the publisher has not made.
Record
| Original publisher | Tom's Guide |
| Canonical URL | https://www.tomsguide.com/ai/people-will-buy-intelligence-from-us-on-a-meter-chatgpts-ceo-sam-altman-has-critics-worried-with-his-ai-vision |
| Publication time | Tue, 26 May 2026 17:39:20 +0000 |
| Retrieval time | 2026-05-26T17:47:50.581Z |
| Last seen | 2026-05-26T17:47:50.581Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
| Excerpt source | publisher body |
| Excerpt method | First ~120 words (~800 chars) of extracted publisher body, fair-use limited. |
| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
| Citation coverage | Summary is a WeSearch-generated derivative; primary citation is the original publisher URL. |
| Cluster | VsQkmeUyfE4k · 2 stories |
| Cluster logic | Grouped by semantic title/content similarity across sources within a rolling window. Same-publisher template collisions are excluded from coverage comparison. |
| Ranking reason | Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking. |
| Publisher visit | Yes — open original |
| Substitutes article? | No — link-out required for full text |
Rights status (four layers)
WeSearch handling by dimension
| Indexing | May the item be indexed (stored, ranked, made findable)? | Allowed |
| Snippet | May a short excerpt of the publisher's text be shown? | Allowed |
| AI summary | May WeSearch generate its own short summary of the article? | Limited |
| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
| Model training | May the content be used to train AI models? | Not asserted |
| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
Basis: Derived from the published RSS/Atom feed. Contact: [email protected]. Reviewed: 2026-07-24.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
AI 'People will buy intelligence from us on a meter': ChatGPT's CEO, Sam Altman, has critics worried with his AI vision News By Amanda Caswell published 26 May 2026 Sam Altman says OpenAI wants to sell intelligence like a utility When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works. (Image credit: Getty Images) Copy link Facebook X Reddit Email Share this article 0 Join the conversation Follow us Add us as a preferred source on Google Newsletter Subscribe to our newsletter During a recent appearance at BlackRock in Washington, D.C., OpenAI's Sam Altman, shared his vision for the future of AI.
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Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at Tom's Guide.
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