Power Players: Can AI really regulate itself?

Will Bain (0:00)

Don't kill the Golden Goose has been President Trump's mantra when asked about more regulation for AI, even when some of those developing the tech have been warning again this week that their models potentially pose an existential threat to humanity. Over lunch at the White House on Tuesday, some of the biggest players in AI endorsed what the president called tremendous self-regulation. So today on Power Players from Business Daily, can AI really regulate itself?

Yeah, welcome back to the program and our first full house for a few weeks. Will Bain here in the studio.

Michelle Flurry (0:38)

And I'm Michelle Flurry back in New York.

Rahul Tandon (0:39)

And I'm Rahul Tandon with Will in the very small, we need a bigger house. Simon, can you please keep to your side of the studio?

Will Bain (0:47)

Having our own version of that lunch, that Power Players, a real Power Players lunch, wasn't it? Literally a who's who of everybody in AI. Yeah, Michelle, I've made a bit of a mistake already calling it AI, because President Trump says he's going to sign an executive order rebranding it as super intelligence now.

Michelle Flurry (1:04)

Yeah, I mean, I don't know if that's just a marketing thing, but I'm already hearing complaints from people saying it's not accurate.

Will Bain (1:12)

Why? Because it's not super or it's not intelligent?

Michelle Flurry (1:15)

I mean, we're going to get straight into the weeds here, but basically what we're talking about at the moment is large language models, which is a form of sort of advanced AI, but kind of the real dream is this super intelligent, closer to human way of thinking, and that's not where we're at at the moment. And so by applying that term now, people say it's going to create confusion about what exactly is the capability of this technology.

Rahul Tandon (1:40)

That is one of the problems, isn't it? We don't want to get machines to be more intelligent than ours, because that's what leads into the problem. And that's what the discussion was about yesterday. Will said we had a who's who of the AI world there with President Trump to discuss this issue that affects all of the 700 million people already on this planet using AI. Let's hear what they had to say.

Dario Amodei (2:01)

AI has incredible benefits. I've talked about the medical benefits of the technology.

As the president has said, whoever wins AI wins. I think that's very important. But I think the technology has very real risks. And the mechanism how we address those risks is still under discussion.

Sam Altman (2:20)

I think these are good steps forward. The idea isn't that this is the only thing that we will ever do. It is that this is a start and an accord that the whole industry could come to.

Jensen Huang (2:28)

We are going to have to create new technologies to advance the capabilities of AI, but we're also creating new technologies to advance the safety of AI.

Rahul Tandon (2:36)

So we heard from Jensen Wang there, who of course is head of NVIDIA, Mark Zuckerberg, head of Meta. In the beginning, we heard from Dario Amura, who's of course in charge of Anthropic. And I think that is the really interesting thing, is he was about to speak. He took this question.

Will Bain (2:51)

This is an incredible clip of people I haven't seen.

Rahul Tandon (2:53)

President Trump goes to him, be careful.

He then gives his answer. And there's a pause then, as another journalist asks President Trump a question. And he basically sidles away to the pack, so he doesn't have to take anymore. And he's had a difficult relationship at times, I think, hasn't he, Michelle, with President Trump?

Michelle Flurry (3:14)

He certainly has. But you know, the one that made me laugh a lot was when he called up after Dario, he called up the boss of Google, Sundar Pichai, he said, he's the monster that none of you know.

Will Bain (3:27)

Is it better to be a monster or a left-wing nut job, which is what he's called Dario Amadei before?

Michelle Flurry (3:32)

But the Google CEO responded by saying, you know, when he was introduced eventually by his name, Sundar, he said, I prefer that tagline to monster, which drew a laugh from the crowd.

Will Bain (3:44)

But again, it sort of speaks to, I guess, the scale of all of this and why they were having this meeting. We'll get into it in a bit more detail. Here's President Trump in his own words about what he hoped to achieve from that meeting, including what he called a morally binding accord about the future of regulation and AI.