It is far too early to impose heavy regulation on American AI because regulators don't yet understand what actually needs to be regulated, much like early automobile regulation took decades to figure out.
Weil argues against early heavy-handed AI regulation, drawing an analogy to the auto industry, which took 40 years to develop seat belts, airbags, and speed limits. ✦ AI generated
Kevin Weil · BG2 Pod · 2025-06-21 · original ↗
starts at this moment · 15:12
“Is that a fair characterization, you think, of where OpenAI is today?”
We definitely are in the camp that it is way too early to obstruct American AI with useless regulations. Like we don't even know what we should be regulating. It's like regulating the auto industry right out of existence early. It took us 40 years to realize we needed seat belts and airbags and that we needed speed limits and things like that.
verbatim transcript · starts at 15:12
15:12but it has come that level of profound change has come without that big of like you know societal disruption. Yeah. And I I you know I think we we definitely are in the camp that it is way too early to obstruct American AI with you know useless regulations. Like we don't even know what we should be regulating. It's like regulating the auto industry right out of existence early. It took us 40
15:40years to realize we needed seat belts and airbags and that we needed uh speed limits and things like that. And we'll need all those things for AI. uh but I think it's way too early to to be doing that. So it's been a welcome I think development on on on our end to see you know open AAI increasingly vocal about the need to make sure that you know we
16:02stay open and we stay Kevin one thing you and I know you didn't give any specifics but I um I think you had a question from the audience about the hardware device and and you did share some philosophical thoughts could I think the audience would be thrilled to hear what you said earlier this is about the acquisition of Johnny Ives correct uh you know, business and what you guys
16:22intend to do in in in hardware. Yeah. Oh, I just said and I think this is as true of hardware as it is of software just that AI is going to change everything about the way that we do our jobs, the way that we, you know, get our get stuff done in our personal lives. And I think basically every product, service, device, etc. that we use will
16:47be will need to be reinvented. Yes. And that doesn't mean that the incumbents can't reinvent it. I think sometimes they will, right? But I don't I doubt in every case they will. Certainly history doesn't tell us that that would be true. And so I think that means there's a huge opportunity for for reinvention and that's you that's an opportunity for us in places where we think we can play a
17:06role. We where we think we have a a perspective. We'll go compete. It also means great opportunities for startups. Yes. And by the way, I do think it means good opportunities for incumbents if they can move quickly and sort of overcome the the innovators dilemma. That's a really hard thing to do. No doubt. So I I just think if you look at the the the products that you spend your
- ·We don't yet know what to regulate
- ·Premature rules risk killing American AI
- ·Heavy-handed regulation now is 'useless'
- ·Took 40 years to develop seat belts, airbags
- ·Speed limits also emerged gradually over time
- ·Early auto rules could have stalled the industry