Zuckerberg, Musk and Huang scuttle plan for AI industry regulator

Early last week, AI's biggest names looked like they were converging on the idea of regulation. Over the weekend, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei had proposed a three-step plan for slowing AI development: embedding third-party evaluators inside labs, coordinating across the domestic industry, and forging international agreements, potentially with government help. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Google DeepMind co-founder Demis Hassabis, and even SpaceX CEO Elon Musk publicly seemed to agree with parts of it.

That alignment did not last. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg came out against limiting companies' autonomy, and the Wall Street Journal reported that Zuckerberg, Musk, and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang scuttled proposals for an industry-funded independent regulator for AI, modeled on the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA), a private nonprofit regulator in finance. Meta pointed to a Zuckerberg post on X distancing himself from calls for a slowdown: "Every lab has the responsibility and incentive to move at the pace required to train its models safely, and the ability to take its own actions to ensure that happens."

OpenAI has not dropped the idea. Chris Lehane, the company's global affairs chief, told The Verge that government still has a role: "People want to know AI is being developed safely. That begins with the steps companies like ours take on our own, but government has an important role too. The AI policy window is open, with growing bipartisan support for mandatory national safety standards for frontier AI. Congress should turn that momentum into a framework that strengthens safety, supports American innovation, and keeps the U.S. leading in AI." Anthropic declined to comment beyond Amodei's essay, in which he wrote the company has "always ... advocat[ed] for well-considered regulation of AI, even when this gets us accused of hype, 'doomerism', or regulatory capture." Safe Superintelligence, SpaceX and Google did not respond to requests for comment; Thinking Machines Lab declined to comment.

Government involvement currently looks unlikely. The Trump administration has called the idea of an AI safety crisis a "hoax." Trump called Jensen Huang onstage at a conference to tell the crowd over speakerphone that "the robots will not be taking over," and posted on Truth Social that "the only control or 'guardrails' that AI needs is a STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT." He also claimed his administration has already "stopped AI 'people' from doing bad, or potentially bad, 'things,'" using its "tremendous CRIMINAL and REGULATORY power over these companies," and denounced a "SICK conspiracy," warning "Conspiracy Theorists, Treasonists, Traitors, and Leakers, BEWARE!"

Nick Reese, an adjunct professor at New York University and the Department of Homeland Security's former director of emerging tech policy, called this a reversal: he worked on Executive Order 13960 during Trump's first term, an order that has not been repealed and set principles for federal AI use meant to protect "privacy, civil rights, [and] civil liberties." "Six years ago, the Trump Administration signed executive action on AI safety, so there is a real change in the president's position on the topic," Reese said. "AI safety requires more than the intellectual abilities of one elected official." He described the administration's overall stance as "wobbly and inconsistent," and argued that framing the danger as robots coming to get people distorts the actual problem: AI that is not physical or embodied is already causing harm now. He also dismissed the idea that regulation is inherently bad for innovation as "tired," pointing to how the financial sector and airlines are regulated precisely because failure cannot be tolerated.

AI-industry blogger Zvi Mowshowitz argued Trump is not fully anti-regulation, since his administration has already imposed some restrictions on frontier labs, such as pre-release government testing, but that he is driven more by "vibes" than consistent policy: "Trump's not yet buying this 'existential risk' thing, that's 'negative forces.'" An anonymous AI venture capitalist, who asked not to be named because of current investments, compared the moment to earlier technologies: "You see these moments in every technology, whether it was electricity, cars, or airplanes, where, at some point, the industry had to come together to find a way to say, 'How do we collectively embrace what safety means?'"

Key facts

The Wall Street Journal reported that Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang scuttled proposals for an industry-funded independent AI regulator modeled on FINRA.
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei had proposed a three-step plan for slowing AI development: third-party evaluators in labs, domestic industry coordination, and international agreements with possible government help.
OpenAI's global affairs chief Chris Lehane told The Verge that Congress should turn bipartisan momentum into mandatory national safety standards for frontier AI.
The Trump administration has called AI safety fears a "hoax"; Trump told a conference crowd "the robots will not be taking over" and said on Truth Social that the only guardrail AI needs is a "STRONG AND SMART" president.
Nick Reese, a former DHS emerging-tech-policy director, noted that Trump's own first-term Executive Order 13960 on federal AI safety principles is still in effect and unrepealed, calling the administration's current stance "wobbly and inconsistent."

Why it matters

A rare moment of apparent agreement among AI's leading CEOs on the need for some regulation collapsed within days into open disagreement, and the industry's attempt to police itself, a FINRA-style independent regulator, was killed by the same executives who might have funded it. With the Trump administration dismissing safety concerns as a "hoax," neither industry self-regulation nor government action currently looks likely, leaving frontier AI development without either external or internal checks for now.

Who it affects

OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta, Google DeepMind, SpaceX, Nvidia, Safe Superintelligence and Thinking Machines Lab, the labs and executives whose positions the article tracks. It also affects the Trump administration and Congress, which Lehane is explicitly lobbying for national safety standards, and by extension anyone relying on frontier AI systems being developed under some form of independent oversight.

How to use it

The concrete thing to watch is whether Congress acts on what Lehane calls an open "AI policy window" with growing bipartisan support for mandatory national safety standards, since that is the one avenue OpenAI is still actively pushing after the industry-funded regulator idea died. Anyone tracking AI policy should also note that Trump's own administration already imposed some restrictions on frontier labs, such as pre-release government testing, so the picture is not simple opposition to any oversight at all.

How solid is it

The reporting rests on The Verge's own on-the-record quotes (Chris Lehane, Nick Reese, Zvi Mowshowitz, an anonymous venture capitalist) plus a Wall Street Journal report on the scuttled regulator proposal and Amodei's own published essay. Not every company responded on the record: Anthropic and Thinking Machines Lab explicitly declined to comment, while Safe Superintelligence, SpaceX and Google simply did not respond to requests for comment, which the article treats as a distinct category from declining.

Risks and caveats

Nothing described here is binding: there is no actual bill, regulation or signed agreement, only public statements, an essay, an unnamed venture capitalist's view, and a killed proposal. The identity of that venture capitalist is not disclosed, and the exact dates of Amodei's essay and Executive Order 13960's signing are not given in the source, only relative references like "over the weekend" and "six years ago."

“Every lab has the responsibility and incentive to move at the pace required to train its models safely, and the ability to take its own actions to ensure that happens.”

— Mark Zuckerberg, Meta CEO, posted on X