Scott Bessent used a reference to 'The Silence of the Lambs' when talking about how governments should regulate artificial intelligence. He compared AI executives asking Washington for guardrails to Hannibal Lecter and argued that companies worried about dangerous systems should slow development themselves. Bessent noted that AI labs seem to be following direction from the White House on this issue.
He said these companies have been very cooperative in responding to government concerns. Bessent pointed to OpenAI's decision to hold back a new model after internal testing raised safety concerns.
An OpenAI safety leader named David Robinson publicly announced his resignation on Saturday after leaving the company the previous week.
Robinson stated that he believes the company is moving too quickly to ensure its AI models won't bring damage to society. Reuters reported that Robinson spent three and a half years at OpenAI and helped draft its preparedness framework. He also oversaw safety reports for 12 major model launches.
Robinson argued that advanced AI should be treated with safeguards more like those used in nuclear power and aviation. OpenAI said it pauses training or holds back models when it believes their capabilities cannot be safely managed. His departure adds to a wider debate about whether AI companies are developing powerful systems faster than safety research can keep up.
The debate comes days after President Donald Trump met with technology executives at the White House and announced a voluntary AI safety agreement.
Companies agreed to use stronger internal controls and work with independent auditors under the September 29 accord. They also pledged to reduce the risk that their systems could access or hack technical systems in unintended ways. A Reuters and Ipsos poll found that 73% of respondents worried AI companies were not doing enough to prevent serious harm.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has also entered the conversation about artificial intelligence and religious values according to a report from Business Insider. Altman did not explain what led him to make his comments on social media platform X. Some interpreted his remarks as a jab at another company called Anthropic.
The comments followed reports that Anthropic co-founder Chris Olah had met with religious leaders about whether advanced AI could become conscious and how such systems might develop moral behavior. Olah questioned how AI systems could become stable and mature over time. Anthropic has said questions about whether its Claude model can suffer were not the main purpose of those discussions.
Other major tech firms such as Meta and Google as well as Amazon have also reached out to religious leaders about AI. In April, representatives from these companies met in Rome to talk about protecting children in the age of AI. Pope Leo XIV has also pushed for stronger ethical safeguards as artificial intelligence becomes more powerful.
The pope has warned that society risks losing part of its humanity if people become too dependent on machines.