AI companies can be made safer by tying shareholder profits to safety, not by slowing down together
A former Justice Department antitrust official says tying shareholder returns to safety would let AI companies keep competing and profiting.
WSJ What's News · The Chip Giant Helping Anthropic Buy More ChipsAs pressure builds for Washington to regulate artificial intelligence, with a recent Wall Street Journal poll finding that 57 percent of Americans want immediate action and gridlock in Congress making new laws difficult, Jonathan Cantor offered a different way to think about safety.
Cantor, who served as an assistant attorney general handling antitrust cases for the Justice Department during the Biden administration, argues that companies do not need to pause together in order to build safer systems. "Tell us where the stop signs and the traffic lights are, and then make the consequences significant enough so that we can adhere to them," he said.
Companies have obligations to their shareholders, so the goal should be to make fulfilling those obligations require safe and secure products. If failures carried significant consequences for shareholders, Cantor argues, investors would hold their companies accountable, and the products would improve while companies still make money and deliver strong returns.
He said he is suspicious when companies call for everyone to slow down. If a company really thinks it is building something harmful, Cantor said, "you don't have an obligation to ship it."
His example was aviation. "If Boeing has a door flying off midair, it doesn't need Airbus to ground its planes in order to figure out how to fix its problem," he said. He was referring to January 2024, when a door plug blew off an Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 Max after takeoff, prompting federal investigations.
Cantor said he wants companies "competing to develop safe and secure products," which he says is good for shareholder returns and the public.
Questions people ask
What does Cantor mean by shareholder obligations?
Shareholder obligations are the legal duties corporate managers have to act in the financial interests of the people who own the company's stock. Cantor's point is that if unsafe AI products threatened those financial interests through lawsuits or penalties, investors would demand safer products on their own.
What Boeing door incident is he talking about?
He is referring to a January 2024 incident in which a door plug blew off an Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 Max shortly after takeoff. No one was seriously hurt, but the episode triggered federal investigations and renewed scrutiny of Boeing's safety and manufacturing practices.