Tech CEO worries about AI development spur political reaction

0:00It's Consider This, where every day we go deep on one big news story. President Trump weighed in over the weekend on a reckoning for artificial intelligence that's been building momentum in recent days. We can quit guardrails. We can do this and that. But I think you have a lot of negative forces that are bringing it up that shouldn't be bringing it up. And they're bringing up things that won't happen. The remarks seemed focused on keeping America competitive with China rather than on regulation from Washington. dismissing rising fears after Anthropics CEO Dario Amode published an essay on Saturday calling for international cooperation to slow down the development of AI.

0:40Sam Altman, the CEO of rival OpenAI, joined in on social media saying he agreed with Amode and that OpenAI is delaying their plans for an expected blockbuster public listing. Jacob Coxon, a researcher who resigned last week from Anthropic, talked with NPR's All Things Considered recently and cautioned about the dangers of artificial intelligence. There's the possibility we create something that, if it wanted to, could hack into any device on the planet, could use novel biological research to go far beyond what current scientists are capable of, could control, like, every robot in the world simultaneously.

1:16Consider this. Jacob Coxon is warning us all about sleepwalking into a science fiction scenario. But will the growing backlash lead to a slowdown of AI development or any new government regulation? From NPR, I'm Alyssa Nadwarni.

1:52Host Mike Townsend and his guests explore policy initiatives for retirement savings, taxes, trade, and more. Download the latest episode and follow at schwab.com slash Washington Wise or wherever you listen. This message comes from IXL, a learning platform for helping kids build confidence and get up to speed fast. One subscription covers math, science, and reading for all children in a household. Receive 20 % off at IXL.com slash NPR.

2:50It's Consider This from NPR. Top U.S. lawmakers are calling for talks to begin on Capitol Hill about a regulatory framework for artificial intelligence. This comes after the heads of some of the most prominent tech companies over the weekend called for a slowdown of their own industry's development of AI. I spoke with NPR's Shannon Bond, who covers how technology, politics, power, and influence all intersect. And I asked her to help us understand why the leaders of the largest systems are so worried. So Dario Amadei says he believes in the benefits of AI still, but he feels the technology is advancing too quickly now for safety to keep up.

3:31And so he's urging companies and governments to do what he calls pace the frontier, basically to collaboratively slow down development so they can address these risks. Here's what he told CNN. At the end of the day, the industry has to work together and it's harder, but to some extent, the world has to work together. And as you said, Altman quickly hopped on board saying that he agreed. And in an interview with Fortune magazine, Altman also said that OpenAI would delay its highly anticipated initial public offering, which the company had been targeting to happen this year. So we've heard warnings about powerful AI for years.

4:05Why are these CEOs saying now is the time to take action? That's true, especially from Dario Amadei. He left OpenAI, in fact, to co-found Anthropic specifically to take a more safety-focused approach to building AI. But listen, lately these fears have become inflamed about how quickly AI is advancing towards a point where it might no longer be governable by humans. You know, when Coxon, that Anthropic researcher, quit, he said both Anthropic and OpenAI are, quote, gambling with our lives. They're not acting responsibly. And many in this industry agree with him. And it really seems, Alyssa, we hit this tipping point recently with this incident this summer where OpenAI systems went rogue and hacked a company called Hugging Face and hacked OpenAI itself.

4:45And Amadei pointed out to this hack and to other security breaches, including Ed Anthropic, in his essay calling for these measures. So what are these AI leaders proposing to do? Well, Amadei says that labs need to bring in independent evaluators who can look at safety. He says Anthropic is going ahead, taking that step now. Altman says OpenAI will do the same. And other AI leaders, including Elon Musk, Microsoft's Satya Nadella, Google's Demisa Sabis, they also chimed in this weekend, largely agreeing that they didn't make specific commitments. OpenAI already said last month that it was temporarily slowing down development of its leading-edge AI models to make sure something like this hugging face hack does not happen again.

5:28But Dario Amadei says addressing safety risks is not something that these companies or the industry can do alone, and it's going to require global cooperation. What would global cooperation or global governance look like? That is a good question. So what Amade is calling for is for governments and industry to work together to create rules of the road, such as establishing common safety standards for AI and verifying compliance. But so far, we have not seen progress on that front. Officials from the U.S. and China are expected to meet this month to talk about AI safety and AI is on the agenda at the U.N.

6:00General Assembly. So even if President Trump is brushing these worries aside, it seems like other world leaders are paying attention. Anthropic is a financial supporter of NPR, and we cover it like any other company. We've been talking with NPR's Shannon Bond, who covers how technology, politics, power, and influence all intersect. Thank you, Shannon. Thanks, Alyssa. This episode was produced by Daniel Offman. It was edited by Brett Neely, Michael Leavitt, and Sarah Robbins. Our director is Jordan Marie Smith. Our interim executive producer is Courtney Dorning. It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Alyssa Nadwony.

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