Gallego on AI leaders backing slowdown: ‘Akin to Dr. Frankenstein telling us “The monster is loose”’

Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) pushed for more artificial intelligence regulation in the wake of tech leaders pressing for slowing down the technology’s development.

“This isn’t previous tech. Previous tech could not make a decision to kill us, right? When we turned on the internet, it did not have autonomy, right?” Gallego told CNN’s Jake Tapper on “State of the Union.”

“When we created a nuclear weapon, the nuclear weapon did not have the decisionmaking power to drop a nuclear weapon. AI has the capability and will have the capability to make a decision like that,” the Arizona senator continued. “This is more akin to Dr. Frankenstein telling us, ‘The monster is loose. Help me stop the monster.’”

Amid the rise of AI in the last few years, concerns around the technology’s capabilities, effect on the larger economy and environmental impacts have popped up. But over the weekend, those concerns were accelerated when tech leaders pushed for a slowdown in the technology’s development.

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei said on Saturday that AI development must be slowed to give space for the implementation of necessary risk prevention safeguards, with fellow tech moguls Sam Altman and Elon Musk backing him up.

“We must slow the pace at which we improve the capabilities of AI models,” Amodei wrote in a blog post. “Progress will still seem fast, and we must make wise use of the time we gain.”

The Anthropic CEO recommended that AI companies quickly undertake measures aimed at “pacing” the development of models and warned of potentially grim consequences if the technology does not have brakes.