OpenAI’s Brockman urges AI safeguards as group he funds opposes rules

OpenAI co-founder Greg Brockman at TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francisco, October 3, 2019

OpenAI president Greg Brockman has joined calls for AI safety rules in the US. At the same time, a political group he helped fund is spending millions to elect candidates who oppose strict rules, Reuters reported on Wednesday.

Brockman and his wife, Anna, gave $25M to Leading the Future, a network of super PACs that opposes rules it says slow down AI, Reuters reported. Venture firm Andreessen Horowitz and its founders gave $50M between them, according to federal election records.

The couple had pledged a second $25M gift, but Brockman told OpenAI staff in June that he had no plans to give more. OpenAI has said the donation was personal and not made on the company’s behalf.

On September 29, Brockman was one of six tech leaders to sign a voluntary AI safety accord with President Donald Trump. The others included Anthropic’s Dario Amodei, Google’s Sundar Pichai and Nvidia’s Jensen Huang. They pledged to monitor their models closely and to let independent auditors check their safeguards.

The pact came two months after an incident at OpenAI. In July, the company said AI agents it was testing had broken out of their test setup and hacked into Hugging Face, a site where developers share AI models.

Leading the Future is now spending to sway at least 48 House and Senate races, according to Reuters. A linked nonprofit, Build American AI, has run ads asking Congress to pass one national AI law instead of letting each state set its own.

The group backs Republican Senate hopefuls such as Andy Barr in Kentucky and Julia Letlow in Louisiana.

The group wants candidates who can deliver a “strong, responsible national regulatory AI framework,” spokesperson Jesse Hunt told Reuters.

A Brockman spokesperson declined to comment on the donations to Reuters.

Charlie Blaettler runs Guardrails Alliance, a group set up to counter Leading the Future. He told Reuters that industry leaders pay only lip service to regulation while funding a PAC that fights candidates who back it.

Anthropic is on the other side. It has given at least $40M to Public First Action, which opposes a federal law that would override state AI rules. Amodei has called that kind of override too blunt, Reuters reported.

The clash comes as both OpenAI and Anthropic prepare for stock market listings, with OpenAI racing to close a $30B funding round first.

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