After Sam Altman and others called for AI regulation, some executives including Box CEO Aaron Levie say the US should not rush like the EU did
Tech Leaders Once Cried for AI Regulation. Now the Message Is ‘Slow Down’ — https://www.wired.com/... X: Aaron Levie / @levie : One of the most common concerns about AI is the risk that it takes a meaningful portion of jobs that humans currently do, leading to major economic dislocation. Often these headlines come out of economic studies that look at various job functions and estimate the impact that AI... Kevin Bankston / @kevinbankston : “I have not been to a dinner with more than five AI people where there's a single agreement on how you would regulate AI.” Ditto. But if you are at a dinner table with five people who do agree, back away slowly since you are in a cult and the idea is bad. https://www.wired.com/... Steven Levy / @stevenlevy : A year ago, the tech industry presented itself as begging for AI regulation. This year the prospect of a big AI bill is as likely as Google rehiring the 8 authors of the Transformer paper. https://www.wired.com/... LinkedIn: Kevin Werbach : As always, long-time tech journalist Steven Levy has a perceptive take on AI regulation: the industry is shifting back to a traditional anti-regulatory position. …
Context & Ripple Effects
US AI policy had already been moving more slowly than Europe: lawmakers’ difficulty turning AI concerns into action contrasted with the EU’s earlier rulemaking push. The current split among executives adds industry disagreement to that legislative uncertainty.
The reversal is notable because prominent AI leaders had previously framed regulation as necessary, while OpenAI also warned that compliance with the EU AI Act could determine whether it operated there. Debate is now shifting from whether to regulate toward how quickly and on what terms.
First-order effects
- AI companies and enterprise-software executives gain public cover to oppose rapid, EU-style US rules, reducing the appearance of a unified industry demand for legislation.
- US policymakers face a less coherent set of industry recommendations; Kevin Bankston’s observation of little consensus makes a major near-term bill harder to align around.
Second-order effects
- Startups and smaller AI tool makers can point to the anti-rush case when arguing that broad compliance obligations would favor better-resourced incumbents—a concern raised in the debate over regulation entrenching early AI winners.
- Large AI vendors may increasingly distinguish support for targeted safeguards from support for comprehensive regulation, complicating competitors’ and customers’ planning around a single US compliance baseline.
Third-order effects
- If this divide persists, US AI governance may develop through narrower, sector-specific measures rather than a single sweeping framework, while Europe remains a reference point that industry participants invoke both for and against regulation.
- The episode reinforces a recurring tension in AI policy: calls for guardrails can coexist with incentives to shape, delay, or limit those guardrails once their commercial costs become clearer.
The trend: AI governance is shifting from broad principle-level calls for regulation toward a contest over the scope, pace, and competitive consequences of enforceable rules.