OpenAI, Anthropic and Google working to create AI standards body - CNA

The three technology companies are considering a self-regulatory body to set AI safety standards.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman attends an event in Tokyo, Japan, on Feb 3, 2025. (File photo: Reuters/Kim Kyung-hoon)

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman on Tuesday voiced support for industry-wide collaboration and acknowledged the public's fear that competition between companies and countries might sideline safety.

"I think it's great for our industry to say we want to come together and we want to be able to coordinate and make sure we have enough time to do this safely," Altman said at a conference hosted by Salesforce in San Francisco.

"When there's any implication ..." that some in the industry might "not do the right thing, I think that's when people get very scared," Altman added.

Some tech figures fear cooperation among the AI giants will push out smaller rivals.

CNA Games Guess Word Crack the word, one row at a time Buzzword Create words using the given letters Mini Sudoku Tiny puzzle, mighty brain teaser Mini Crossword Small grid, big challenge Word Search Spot as many words as you can Show More Show Less The chief of Canadian AI company Cohere recently accused the dominant American AI labs of forming a "cartel" under the guise of safety.

"AI needs guardrails. That is not the dispute and never has been. The dispute is over who writes them, who gets to participate and whose interests the rules are protecting," Cohere co-founder and CEO Aidan Gomez wrote in a blog post on Sunday. 

"When the future of humanity is at stake, we need binding international safety rules, not voluntary standards from the industry," Sanders said at an AI safety event in Washington.

Altman warned that AI accidents, small and large, might be inevitable.

"Accidents with any new technology are unavoidable, and we should have a great culture of transparent reporting about them," Altman said.

"Learning from them quickly and adapting as they happen I think will serve our industry well, and maybe we can avoid" the bigger, potentially catastrophic incidents, Altman continued.

Huang, in the call, thanked Trump for "seeing through" the warnings on AI.

Nvidia sits at the centre of the AI revolution, with its chips powering the vast majority of the systems, and Huang has become an informal advisor to Trump.