OpenAI and Anthropic Tell British Lawmakers: Regulate Us
Executives from OpenAI and Anthropic have testified to a British parliamentary committee in favor of binding statutory regulations for AI safety. In contrast, representatives from Google DeepMind and Meta expressed a preference for existing standards and regulatory frameworks over new, mandatory legislation.
Why it matters
The divide between major AI firms regarding government oversight highlights the ongoing global debate on how to balance innovation with the mitigation of existential risks.
The Business, Innovation, Science, and Trade Committee, comprising a cross-party panel of MPs, held an evidence session on Tuesday with appearances from four frontier AI firms, four former staff of the firms turned whistleblowers and senior British civil servants.
“The rules should be binding,” Anthropic’s head of Europe Liam Booth-Smith told the committee, when asked if the company’s view was that AI safety now needs a statutory framework. The company, he said, has “consistently believed that there should be binding rules on companies and that voluntary commitments are not enough.”
OpenAI vice president Tom Duff Gordon was more cautious but still supportive, backing a statutory framework and an international convention. Duff Gordon said “there should be some elements that should be mandatory,” starting with incident reporting. “We don’t think basing everything on voluntary commitments for frontier risk is a good long-term plan,” he said.
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3 other newsrooms covered this event. We read each version separately.
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