Separating AI's Technological Problems from Its Capitalism Problems
Schneier and Sanders argue AI's harms stem from capitalist incentives and governance gaps, not just technical limits, urging structural reform.
Writing with Nathan E. Sanders in Tech Policy Press, Bruce Schneier argues that AI's technological problems (hallucination, sycophancy, overconfidence) must be separated from socio-political problems created by capitalist market incentives. The essay contrasts US frontier-scale, energy-intensive development with China's incentive-driven leaner open models on commodity hardware, and cites Switzerland's Apertus model - trained on licensed data using public computing and renewable hydropower - as a public-interest alternative. It contends that proposals like research pauses, data-center moratoria, and federal screening conflate technology problems with governance problems, and that society faces independent choices on both axes.
Who gets to define the rules for AI?
Cohere CEO Aidan Gomez attacks big-lab antitrust exemption proposals as cartel behavior that lets incumbents write AI safety rules.
Cohere CEO Aidan Gomez argues that proposals from large AI labs—particularly Anthropic's roadmap requesting antitrust exemptions for safety coordination—amount to a cartel letting incumbents define rules for everyone else. He draws parallels to the 1975 SEC NRSRO credit-rating designations and the EU's 1985 Motor Vehicle Block Exemption, where safety justifications produced incumbent-protecting market structures. Gomez supports independent review of highly capable AI systems but disputes who writes the standards, who conducts review, and who participates. He also warns AI cyber offense is getting cheaper faster than defenses are improving.