More than 1,300 tech employees sign open letter asking for AI to be regulated

Ah, the sweet sound of 1,300 tech employees collectively discovering that the train they're driving might be hurtling toward a cliff — and their solution is to write a strongly worded letter asking someone, anyone, to please install a brake. The open letter, signed by more than 1,300 of the industry's finest, asks the U.S. government to support an international effort to develop 'technical and governance tools' to 'deliberately pace the frontier of automated AI development.' Marvelous. 'Deliberately pace' — that's the kind of euphemism that makes you wonder if the signatories have ever seen a corporate mission statement. It means slow down, you fools, before we all get replaced by a system that can write better mission statements than we can.

Of course, the letter is addressed to the U.S. government, the same institution that has spent years treating AI regulation like a hot potato at a garden party. The same government that couldn't agree on what AI is, let alone how to pace its frontier. And what do the employees ask for? Not a moratorium, not a ban, but the 'development of technical and governance tools' — which in practice means more committees, more white papers, and more funding for the very sorts of institutions that have been so effective at reining in the industry so far. It's like asking the fox to design a better chicken coop.

But let's give credit where it's due: these 1,300 souls have at least gone on record. They've put their names to something that says 'maybe we should pause and think,' which is more than most of their colleagues have done — most are presumably still busy trying to make their AI models a little bit less racist. One imagines the letter being circulated over a lunch break, then filed away in a drawer while the board reviews quarterly projections. The frontier will not be paced, the letter will be archived, and in a year someone will dig it out and say 'we told you so.'