Sacks to OpenAI, Anthropic: Self-Pace AI, Drop Regulatory Demands — SkimNews
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- David Sacks told Sam Altman and Dario Amodei to "go ahead and pace the frontier," arguing OpenAI and Anthropic hold a "duopoly" on frontier intelligence by market share, revenue growth, and model capability.
- Sacks rejected the need for suspended antitrust law, a regulatory approval process that supersedes product liability, or anyone else's permission, telling the CEOs to "just do it" themselves.
- Sacks challenged the independence of METR, calling it "intertwined with Anthropic's investors and staff," and questioned why the same evaluators should police competitors "who aren't even at the frontier."
- Sacks argued the motivation to slow down isn't purely altruistic, citing "massive product-liability exposure" and the Hugging Face episode as market-driven reasons to trade raw power for reliability and predictability.
- Sacks said demanding a preferred regulatory framework as the price of slowing down "will look like blackmail of the public and the political system," framing the move as potential "regulatory capture" or an "election-season psyop."
- Sacks noted China is unlikely to join a global AI agreement and argued self-pacing would create breathing room for a more intelligent conversation than Bernie Sanders' "shut it all down."
Why it matters: Coming from a White House-aligned voice in AI policy debates, Sacks's challenge raises the political cost for OpenAI and Anthropic of bundling safety commitments with specific regulatory asks. The piece reframes the frontier-AI debate from "we need new laws" to "the leading labs should act without demanding preferred frameworks first," putting both CEOs on the spot to choose between public goodwill and the appearance of regulatory capture.
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