Critics say tech companies can't be left to their own on AI

"No one is building the guardrails," Harris says in a clip of the interview, which NBC shared first with Axios. "And this has moved so much faster than our government has been able to understand or appreciate."

The big picture: Few laws specifically cover how companies or governments use artificial intelligence, though the European Union has begun drafting a wide-ranging AI Act.

Between the lines: Harris and his Center for Humane Tech colleague Aza Raskin say that efforts within tech companies to build "responsible AI" and other forms of self-regulation are insufficient.

• "Responsibility always gets bulldozed by market incentives, by your stock price, by needing to beat somebody else," Raskin says in the NBC interview.
• Even many of the companies involved in the technology have called for regulation, and other warnings have come from rank-and-file workers.
• "The people inside the companies know that this is moving at a reckless pace, which is why they've kind of channeled their concerns to us," Harris said.