OpenAI: AI capabilities are in a ‘different place’ and require urgency
President Donald Trump called AI concerns a “hoax.” One of the country’s leading AI companies said Tuesday it’s hoping Washington will still act.
OpenAI, which this weekend called for federal safety measures alongside its rival Anthropic, said it spent the beginning of the week meeting with members of both parties to discuss legislation that would rein in AI developers as warnings of impending doom, job loss and massive cyberattacks become increasingly prevalent.
Models are developing at breakneck speed and agents are acting in ways that engineers are struggling to predict or control. Even as there have long been calls for regulation, recent hacks of companies such as Hugging Face have engendered fresh waves of concern that the technology is reaching a point in which it is capable of causing serious harm.
“We have certainly conveyed that really over the last month that capabilities are in a different place, and as a result of those capabilities being in a different place, we do feel like there needs to be an urgency to this,” Chris Lehane, OpenAI’s chief global affairs officer, said the company told the White House.
That neither the president, the House speaker or the Senate majority leader seem particularly enthused by the idea should not be cause for alarm, Lehane said.
“The way policy works in this town is you push, you push, you push, and then when it gets there, you can sort of leap through the window. The window is open. Now we need to go through the window,” Lehane said.
“There’s a phrase in basketball, right? You want to hang around the rim so that you can take the ball, and like there’s a bit of that right now.”
On Tuesday, OpenAI endorsed a bipartisan House plan that would require top AI companies to embed outside evaluators who would hold them to safety standards.
Companies including OpenAI, Anthropic and Google have also been meeting with each other to discuss a private sector-led standards body that would function similar to the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority for the financial industry. An executive order that would have created such a body has support inside the White House but Trump has demurred following a phone call during which Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg expressed concerns about the plan.
And Trump, in a series of increasingly adamant social media posts on Monday, made clear that he is not concerned that industry is developing technology it might not be able to control.
In fact, calls from Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei and OpenAI for more regulation have been viewed skeptically by Trump and Vice President JD Vance.
“The only control or ‘guardrails’ that AI needs is a STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT, and the U.S.A. has that, in spades! The Trump Administration has stopped AI ‘people’ from doing bad, or potentially bad, ‘things,’ like Dario (Anthropic!), who is now pretending to be a ‘perfect little angel’ – and we will continue to do so!” Trump posted on social media on Monday.
Trump insists the only concern is not allowing China to race ahead.
“There is a SICK conspiracy going on against AI and Data Centers, and the only one that is happy about it is China. WHOEVER WINS AI, WINS! We are leading China, and all others, and will continue to do so,” Trump said.
While Anthropic has frequently tussled with the administration, including over how the Pentagon should use AI on the battlefield, OpenAI frames its relationship with the administration as pragmatic, Lehane said. Altman recently met with the president at the midterm convention in Dallas.
While it’s unlikely that legislation will pass before the midterms, Lehane said, he remains hopeful that bipartisan consensus on regulating AI could grease the wheels with the White House.
“I think if we get to a place where there’s real, you know, bipartisan support, I think that would certainly create momentum in terms of how people are looking at the need to do this,” he said.
