Opinion | The Hypocrisy of OpenAI and Palantir

One of the reasons I want to have this conversation with you is you’ve ended up, whether you wanted to or not, a bit of a test case for how all this is going to work. So you’re running for Congress. And there is, as I’ve mentioned before, this super PAC that’s funded by co-founders of Palantir, OpenAI and Andreessen Horowitz. They spent a million opposing your campaign so far. – Suggested —— – Two and a half. Oh, two and a half, and suggested they might spend up to 10 million. At the same time, I’ve looked at some of their statements. Greg Brockman, who’s one of the OpenAI founders and is a major donor to this PAC, he has said being pro-A.I. does not mean being anti-regulation. Means being thoughtful, crafting policies to secure A.I.’s transformative benefits while mitigating risks and preserving flexibility as the technology continues to evolve rapidly. So what’s their problem with you? If they really, truly believed in having one national framework that regulates A.I. and balances the benefits and risks, they’d be supporting me. I think it’s a difference between what they say for marketing purposes and what they actually believe, and their actions portray that. So OpenAI last week released a policy document that mirrors a lot of my policies. The emphases are different. – I wouldn’t say that. I felt —— – Parts of it. Parts of it. Yeah, they’re like, we believe in a 32-hour workweek and —— Yeah, yeah, but they did say they wanted third- party audits. But sometime in the future. I think we’re already there. And there was much more of an emphasis on society dealing with the problems after the fact as opposed to restrictions on the developers. I’m not saying it’s a match, but they put forward some policies there. They also put later in the week policies specifically around kids out that included safe harbor provisions, included testing, encouraging red teaming of models. So when you red team a model or red team any software, you get people to try to intentionally break it – and to do something it’s not supposed to do. – Yeah, I mean, this is my concern and I’ve heard this from people on the Hill that at the exact moment that A.I. is becoming so powerful that it would be irresponsible for Congress to not be starting to construct regulations, legislative structures, transparency, kids, the A.I. industry now has so much money that, much as crypto did before it, it’s able to create a kind of super PAC that has a Death Star-like capability.