Trump: AI companies to self-regulate

Vashala Sripathma (0:01)

Should the AI giants be left to mark their own homework?

Donald Trump (0:05)

I believe they're going to be used for the good, and when they're not, we're going to be able to nab them. But there's going to be a tremendous self-policing aspect.

Mark Zuckerberg (0:12)

The idea isn't that this is the only thing that we will ever do, it is that this is a start.

Vashala Sripathma (0:17)

It's World Business Report from the BBC World Service. I'm Vashala Sripathma. On the way, tech bosses in the US have said to the president that they can self-regulate. Manchester City Football Club is found guilty of issuing fake contracts, and Oktoberfest is back, but the price of a stein might leave you sobering up rather fast.

So, Donald Trump says the US needs to move faster on AI and that companies have agreed to self-regulate.

Donald Trump (0:55)

I believe they're going to be used for the good, and when they're not, we're going to be able to nab them. But there's going to be a tremendous self-policing aspect. We're also thinking about forming a committee of sorts where we put maybe 10 people on that committee. It could be from that group so that we can, so the committee can watch over the whole enterprise.

Vashala Sripathma (1:16)

So that was after a meeting between the president and some of the biggest names in tech. Metaboss Mark Zuckerberg says people should have faith that they will be kept safe.

Mark Zuckerberg (1:28)

The American public and our customers want to know that what we're building is working in the way that we all intend. So we drafted a set of principles and commitments around building robust internal controls and detecting if there are any issues with the technology, coupled with multiple layers of auditing and controls, starting with internal risk review, external auditors and evaluators, and agreeing that we're going to have all of our boards of directors independently review the reports that come from the auditors. I thought these are good steps forward.

Vashala Sripathma (2:02)

So Sam Altman wasn't at the meeting. He's the boss of Open AI. And later or earlier today, he suggested that his company is slowing things down. Here he is speaking about the future of AI and his company at a developer day in San Francisco.

Sam Altman (2:22)

People often talk about AI as a new industrial revolution.

I find that quite off-putting. The best version of AI is not about making people cogs in a giant machine, ever worrying faster and faster. There are some parts of life that we cannot and should not automate. I believe that the future, if we get this right, can be much more like a new Renaissance than a new industrial revolution.

Vashala Sripathma (2:44)

So that was Sam Altman speaking about open AI's decision to reverse on a model that it has because it thought of it as being too dangerous. So a bit of reality check there for the AI industry tonight, even if this meeting with President Trump seemingly went well, this decision to self-regulate, Christy Pitts is with us tonight. She's a tech investor based in Silicon Valley. Hi, Christy.

Christy Pitts (3:13)

Hi. Hello. How are you?

Vashala Sripathma (3:15)

Not too bad. Thank you very much for joining us. This is an interesting set of rules that has emerged from this meeting. As an investor, when a company like open AI rose back like it did today, does it stop you in your tracks a bit?

Christy Pitts (3:32)

Yes. So as an investor, actually, I think that this delay of open AI's new model is actually a good sign because of some of the breaches that have happened from the company over the last few months. And one of the breaches that got a significant amount of attention was between open AI and hugging face. But there have been others in addition to that, including where an open AI agent accessed medical information from the government of Australia, for example. And so there's some clear examples here where these agents are acting on their own, not necessarily with nefarious intentions, but their actions can have bad implications. So it actually is a good sign that the company is taking that into consideration.

Vashala Sripathma (4:17)

And what do you make of the president's comments that companies like open AI can self-regulate? What does that actually mean?

Christy Pitts (4:27)

So the concept here, well, according to what we are seeing in the news, is that the people that attended the White House AI lunch today, including representatives from Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, Meta, NVIDIA, Palantir and others, have signed a binding accord around what's happening in AI and setting guardrails in place. However, we don't know yet what that accord entails.