Bill Gates says AI companies self-regulating isn't enough ...

Bill Gates has looked at the AI industry and concluded that self-regulation isn't enough — which, from a man whose own company once needed a government antitrust case to notice the concept of restraint, is either a late-career conversion or a very well-lit exit. The second half of his assessment is where it gets delicious: the people running the labs are 'completely genuine,' he says, especially in their recent communications. Recent communications — the one genre of corporate document whose entire purpose is to appear sincere in public: safety frameworks, open letters, the earnest blog post with 'responsibly' in the subheading. Gates has read the marketing and pronounced it heartfelt, which is a bit like judging a suit by its hanger.

And here's the part to savour: they would like to slow themselves down. Would like. Not are slowing. Not have slowed. The desire is fully installed and the brake pedal is pristine. This is the entire architecture of voluntary restraint in one clause — a sincere wish, expressed aloud, to perhaps one day do less of the thing currently being funded at record scale.

Meanwhile the actual governance arrives as Gavin Newsom signing an executive order creating a board of experts on AI safety — a board, not rules, not thresholds, not liability, which is what you convene when you'd like to be photographed doing something. This week Maryland and New York governors released plans 'aimed at boosting' regulation, a verb that promises motion without specifying direction. Across the Atlantic, the Commons committee is still waiting to see the proposals we covered a fortnight ago — paperwork requesting paperwork. Three states, one board, a billionaire's blessing, zero statutes with numbers on them. The labs will keep scaling, the sincerity will continue, and everyone will mean it. That's the trouble.