Economist Alex Tabarrok: Calling Dario's AI Safety Push 'Regulatory Capture' Doesn't Hold Up
jankulveit · x · 2026-09-16
Economist Alex Tabarrok argues on Marginal Revolution that claims Dario Amodei's proposal to slow AI and install independent safety teams constitutes regulatory capture don't survive scrutiny.
- The 'beliefs serve interests' heuristic misfires here: 'our product might kill you' is terrible marketing, so reading it as a sales campaign is implausible
- Amodei, Altman and Musk all warned about AI risk before owning AI companies; the concern extends to rank-and-file researchers and scholars with nothing to sell, like Geoffrey Hinton, who left Google to speak freely
- The piece grounds its argument in Marver Bernstein's 1955 regulatory life-cycle theory
- Shared by researcher Jan Kulveit — a notable counterpoint in the AI risk debate
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