Consider This from NPR - Tech CEO worries about AI development spur political reaction

Starting point is 00:00:00 It'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 put 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.

Starting point is 00:00:21 The remarks seemed focused on keeping America competitive with China, rather than on regulation from Washington, dismissing rising fear. fears, after Anthropic CEO Dario Amode published an essay on Saturday, calling for international cooperation to slow down the development of AI. Sam 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.

Starting point is 00:01:03 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 scientist is capable of, could control like every robot in the world simultaneously. Consider 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?

Starting point is 00:01:29 From NPR, I'm Alyssa Adwarnie. It'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.

Starting point is 00:02:08 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. And so he's urging companies and governments to do what he calls pace the frontier,

Starting point is 00:02:27 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

Starting point is 00:02:49 anticipated initial public offering, which the company had been targeting to happen this year. So we've heard warnings about Powerful AI for years. Why are these CEOs saying now is the time to take action? That's true, especially from Dario Amade. He left OpenAI, in fact, to co-found Anthropics, specific. 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.

Starting point is 00:03:17 You know, when Coxon, that anthropic researcher quit, he said both Anthropic and Open AI 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, the summer where Open AI systems went rogue and hacked a company called Hugging Face and hacked Open AI itself. And Amade pointed out to this hack and to other security breaches, including Ad Anthropic, in his essay, calling for these measures. So what are these AI leaders proposing to do? Well, Amadee says that labs need to bring in independent evaluators who can look at safety.

Starting point is 00:03:52 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 Satya Nadella, Google's Demasasabas. They also chimed in this weekend, largely agreeing that they didn't make specific commitments. Open AI already said last month that it was temporarily slowing down development of its leaning edge AI models to make sure something like this hugging face hack does not happen again. But Dario Amadee 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's on the agenda at the UN General 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.

Starting point is 00:05:04 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 Levitt, and Sarah Robbins. Our director is Jordan Marie Smith. Our interim executive producer is Courtney Dorney. It's Consider This from NPR.

Starting point is 00:05:28 I'm Alyssa Adwarnie.

Consider This from NPR - Tech CEO worries about AI development spur political reaction

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