Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Nvidia boss Jensen Huang shrugged off AI gurus’ recent spate of red alarms calling for government regs, saying the matter should be left to companies themselves.
Zuck said AI labs have a natural incentive to create safer models because “people won’t want to use agents that are misaligned with them and that don’t do what they ask,” and they’ll face “significant liability if their models cause harm.”
“Every lab has the responsibility and incentive to move at the pace required to train its models safely, and the ability to take its own actions to ensure that happens,” he wrote late Tuesday on X.
“My view is that trust and alignment are quickly becoming the most important capabilities that will differentiate agents and models. Any lab that doesn’t focus on alignment will fall behind,” he added.
For his part, Huang said Tuesday that speedy development and product safety don’t have to be opposed to each other, arguing it should be each company’s responsibility to ensure safeguards – not regulators.
“It’s a false choice,” Huang said Tuesday at the annual Salesforce Dreamforce event, referring to the debate about speed versus safety. “You could definitely have both at the same time.”
“Run as fast as you can. But if you feel at any given point in time the company’s out of control or the product’s not going to be safe, take a pause and make sure you get it right,” he told Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff in front of an audience.
On CNBC’s “Mad Money” on Tuesday, he called the push for more government intervention “just completely unnecessary,” saying there are already “plenty of laws.”
Their comments made for a big contrast with warnings from Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, who published a lengthy essay over the weekend calling on rival companies to slow their development of AI models — fearful of the risks if the tech becomes too powerful.
SpaceX founder Elon Musk and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman also urged global cooperation among regulators, while Microsoft billionaire Bill Gates warned that no government in the world is properly prepared for a looming AI crisis.
At the Dreamforce conference, Altman doubled down on the need for global cooperation between leading tech firms during a fireside chat with Benioff.
“I think it’s great for our industry to say we want to come together and we want to be able to coordinate and make sure we have enough time to do this safely,” Altman said.
“But when there’s any implication that because of the commercial pressures and the race, some company or between countries, some countries might not do the right thing, I think that’s when people get very scared.”
President Trump has dismissed the safety warnings, claiming they sound like a “conspiracy” that could help China win the global AI race.
He specifically took aim at Amodei for “pretending to be a ‘perfect little angel.’”
China has already signaled an unwillingness to cooperate, with a state-backed newspaper comparing the warnings to a “Cold War” tactic.
Guo Jiakun, a spokesperson for China’s Foreign Ministry, chalked the warnings up to “fear mongering” while Chinese President Xi Jinping said his country will take the lead when it comes to fostering AI collaboration among developing countries.
In his essay, Amodei predicted that foreign rivals may not be willing to coordinate the pacing of AI development.
“I think that’s going to be very difficult because the incentives to pull ahead and the military advantage that you get from that are so large. And honestly, I don’t know if it’s possible, but we should try,” he told CBS News’ “Sunday Morning” over the weekend.