For the first time since worries about AI eradicating humanity sparked a wave of calls for immediate regulation, the companies were all under one roof. Charles addressed the dire warnings in his remarks to his guests.
“There seems urgency in adequately considering the existential dangers of such technologies falling into the wrong hands and being used in potentially catastrophic ways,” he said. “Surely, then, we need sufficient means of control before it is all too late.”
But after weeks of fervent debate about the need to increase oversight and slow the pace of development, tech leaders at the event were eager to change the mood music back to something sunnier.
Jensen Huang, the CEO of Nvidia, whose chips are the engines for almost every player in the AI race, said “we have to build this technology safely and securely and responsibly” — but also with what he termed “responsible optimism.”
And while “every government should be involved,” Huang argued against sweeping new laws, saying the onus was primarily on the industry to ensure its products are safe.
“Those of us building AI must test systems rigorously, protect privacy, anticipate misuse, and secure the infrastructure society will depend on. When a product is not safe enough, we should hold it back and keep engineering,” he said — a thinly veiled rebuke to leading AI labs such as OpenAI and Anthropic whose agents sparked the most recent panic, and whose representatives were in the room.