Altman Asks World to Trust AI Firms to Self-Regulate — SkimNews
Get the Tech newsletter
Daily tech — startups, AI labs, chips, the launches that shape the next decade. Free.
- Sam Altman told a Salesforce conference in San Francisco that the world is "right to be afraid" of AI but should trust AI firms to keep the tech safe, adding companies would "slow down or stop" if they couldn't keep "alignment and safety way ahead of capabilities."
- Bernie Sanders and Steve Bannon both pushed back on self-regulation, with Sanders saying AI decisions had been left to "a handful of the richest people in the world" and Bannon arguing the public cannot trust "tech oligarchs" to police themselves.
- Donald Trump has called AI safety fears a "hoax" and said the only "guardrails" needed is a "strong and smart" president, while new US legislation is unlikely before November midterms given a lack of bipartisan consensus.
- Mark Zuckerberg defended self-regulation on X, writing that AI labs face "significant liability if their models cause harm" and any lab not focused on "alignment will fall behind."
- Nvidia's Jensen Huang, speaking at the same Salesforce conference, said "we don't need new laws or regulations" and called AI safety an "engineering problem" companies should handle with internal pauses.
- Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei called for the pace of AI development to slow and urged government regulation, while his colleague Jack Clark told the BBC that leaving AI unregulated was "rolling dice with immense risks."
- OpenAI and Anthropic said they are working toward industry-wide voluntary safety standards, with OpenAI's Chris Lehane writing the effort will proceed "with or without government support."
Why it matters: The standoff between AI leaders calling for trust and rivals demanding oversight leaves US regulation stalled, with Congress unlikely to act before November midterms and Trump dismissing safety concerns outright — leaving billions of users reliant on voluntary industry commitments that critics from both Sanders and Anthropic call insufficient.
Ask SkimNews
