Is the AI safety debate about safety or control?

How should the tech industry approach the topic of AI safety? Increasingly, high-level executives are weighing in on this question, as a debate rages over whether incidents like the Hugging Face incident — in which an OpenAI agent hacked several different companies — suggest that AI is on the verge of throwing our world into chaos.

In recent weeks, prominent labs have called for a slowing of the AI advancement. Most dramatically, CEO Dario Amodei penned a nearly 4,000 word essay in which he laid out the case for why AI development should be decelerated so that adequate guardrails can be deployed. That plan involves — among other things — an international strategy of collaboration between companies and governments on safe deployment. Rival AI executives — like OpenAI’s Sam Altman and xAI’s Elon Musk — have endorsed Amodei’s plan.

The essay has spurred further conversation throughout the tech industry, although not everyone agreed with Amodei’s call for globally coordinated action. Indeed, many seem to think that government oversight need not necessarily play a role at all.

The latest entrants to this debate include Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who took to X this week to share his thoughts on the matter.