Therein lies Sam Altman's biggest fear: regulatory crackdown or restrictions on OpenAI. At this point the government presents the only risk to the progress and success of OpenAI.

Sure there are competitors like Google but so far OpenAI is the leader and doesn't seem to be slowing down. The market could evolve into a natural duopoly, especially given the huge capital expenditures and technical know-how required to stand up and maintain a cutting edge LLM like GPT-4.

Once GPT-4/chatGPT reaches a certain tipping point for disruption, and public sentiment turns from curiosity to fear, the resulting backlash and scrutiny could be on the level of Microsoft's antitrust case in the 1990s. If I were Sam, I'd be pouring resources and money into DC to try to get ahead of this coming storm.