House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said Sunday that Congress won't lead the charge on regulating AI safety.
Why it matters: Calls for AI companies to adopt safety protocols reached a fever pitch this week, prompting the four biggest AI labs to endorse slowing their models' development.
In nine startling hours on Saturday, the four biggest AI labs — which rarely agree on anything — set aside years of feuds and competition to endorse a slower development pace for their models.
OpenAI will not go public this year given all the safety work it needs to do, CEO Sam Altman said in a Fortune interview released Saturday.
Why it matters: Altman's comments come as fears over doomsday AI scenarios have ramped up since an Anthropic employee resigned and issued a dire warning about AI's capabilities.
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei is calling for an immediate slowdown in the pace of AI development, warning of potentially devastating consequences in a matter of months otherwise.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman quickly agreed that the industry needs to slow the pace of frontier-model advances and take more steps on safety.
Why it matters: Amodei pulled no punches in a new essay, cautioning that swarms of rogue AI agents could take over the internet in as little as six months from now.
Anthropic's latest threat report offers a more immediate wake-up call: Today's models are already helping U.S. adversaries develop kamikaze drones, hunt dissidents and conduct dangerous virus research.
Why it matters: AI is tearing down barriers that have long constrained the world's most dangerous actors. A handful of people can now mount operations that once required legions of spies, engineers or hackers.
The White House, Congress and the country's leading AI companies have allowed AI to grow faster, stronger, more powerful and wildly lucrative (and dangerous), with no serious effort to control it or spread the benefits beyond the super-wealthy.
It's not too late to change this. But if they all dither, duck or dance around it, the chances of AI worst-case scenarios will explode, likely early next year, according to almost every person we talk to privately who truly understands AI.
Why it matters: The technology is getting better, faster than anyone envisioned — with the possibility rising that AI will self-improve and do wildly unpredictable things.
