Google, OpenAI and Anthropic are building their own AI regulator, with no government in it

Google, OpenAI and Anthropic — the three companies whose executives keep telling committees how warmly they welcome sensible regulation — are building their own AI regulator, and the load-bearing word is 'voluntary.' The pattern is the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, the body that regulates Wall Street brokers, which is a charming template if you have ever admired how Wall Street brokers were regulated. No government inside it. That is not a bug; that is the pitch. After a decade of being called in to explain themselves, the labs have found the obvious fix: hold the inquiry in your own building and pick your own chair.

The idea was floated publicly over the summer by Google DeepMind's chief executive, which is the regulatory equivalent of the fox proposing a poultry inspection regime and offering to supply the clipboard. WION asks the right question — genuine safety infrastructure, or a way to occupy regulatory space before a government does? — and then, politely, leaves it there. Reader, it is both, and the second half is doing the driving. Voluntary standards bodies exist to be cited in testimony: 'we have a framework,' the labs will say, and the framework will have been drafted in a room containing nobody who can fine them.

This is the same trio that Australia's Senate inquiry has invited to appear, where the foxes were asked to explain the chicken situation. Their answer is a private members' club with a standards annex: membership voluntary, enforcement voluntary, and the only compulsory item is the announcement. FINRA, remember, supervises brokers; it does not supervise the people building machines that write code, sit exams and occasionally invent their own citations. If this body arrives with real audits and real teeth, wonderful — but teeth are the first thing removed in committee, and this committee is chaired by the people being audited. The minutes will be immaculate.