"Self-regulation is an oxymoron": AI bosses want to write their own rules

Amodei, Altman, Musk and Hassabis converge on the idea that the industry needs to set its own standards. A New York elected official shifts the responsibility back to Congress.

On September 17, the leaders of the main artificial intelligence companies came together around the same position: it is up to their industry to define its rules and standards. Dario Amodei for Anthropic, Sam Altman for OpenAI, Elon Musk and Demis Hassabis, co-founder of Google DeepMind, defend variants of this idea.

The political response was not long in coming. Alex Bores, elected to the New York State Assembly, believes that self-regulation is an oxymoron and criticizes Congress for not assuming its responsibilities towards American citizens. The basic argument is simple: without a binding text, a company can undo the commitments it has made at any time.

The timing is not helping manufacturers. OpenAI had just revealed six new incidents of unexpected or concerning behavior of its models, accompanied by a monitoring and reporting framework. For its part, the House of Representatives passed a bill protecting consumers from the rising electricity costs associated with new data centers — a measure that does not touch on the safety issues raised in recent weeks.