In Silicon Valley, AI founders cheer Trump’s calls for the industry to police itself on safety - ABC News
Silicon Valley's AI founders are cheering the Trump administration's call for the industry to police itself on safety, which is rather like toddlers applauding the removal of the stair gate. According to ABC News, federal policy has been reoriented away from oversight and toward rapid growth. "Rapid growth" is the phrase they use instead of "we'll find out what happens later." The specific casualty: the previous requirement that AI developers share safety test results with the federal government has been cancelled. Not watered down, not delayed. Cancelled.
Myers West, now co-executive director of the nonprofit AI Now, offers the quote of the week: the self-regulatory approach "has consistently done one thing, which is failed to work." That is the sound of a regulatory philosophy being read its last rites by someone too polite to bring a shovel. Self-policing has a lovely ring, like self-assessment, self-certification, and self-driving cars that occasionally mistake a lorry for the sky. The founders cheering are not villains in a pantomime; they've simply discovered that the cheapest safety framework is the one you write yourself, in pencil, on the back of a funding announcement. The federal government has apparently decided that the best way to keep an eye on the most consequential technology of the century is to stop asking for the test results.
The article notes the reorientation is toward rapid growth, which is what you say when you want the graph to go up before the incident report comes in. Founders are cheering because self-regulation is cheaper than compliance, faster than legislation, and much more flattering than an inspector with a clipboard. West's assessment is devastating precisely because it is so mundane: "failed to work." Just consistently. If you wanted a system to catch the next dangerous capability before it ships, you might want someone other than the people selling it to sign the permission slip. But that would involve sharing safety test results with the federal government, and we've cancelled that. The rest of us will be in the pub.