Episode summary
How AI Regulation Could Help the Public—and Investors Too | WSJ’s Take On the Week
The Journal
· · Hosts: Telis Demos, Miriam Gottfried · Guests: Jonathan Kanter
Summary
The episode argues that AI regulation is likely inevitable, but not soon enough to rely on a weak Congress and constrained agencies. Jonathan Kanter says the Supreme Court’s major questions doctrine pushes the biggest decisions back to lawmakers, while gerrymandering and campaign finance make Congress too dysfunctional to act quickly. He says the result is a gap between public demand for oversight and the government’s ability to deliver it.
Kanter sketches a framework built around duties of care and duties of loyalty. He says AI products should be required to be safe, secure, respectful of privacy, and protective of creators’ rights, and that companies should face consequences large enough to matter to shareholders. He argues that meaningful penalties would not kill innovation; they would push firms to innovate around safety and make products more valuable in the long run.
The hosts also discuss how AI is rippling through markets. They point to SpaceX’s profit, its AI-related growth, and Musk’s proposed Tesla merger, then turn to the volatility in AI-linked debt and so-called neo cloud financing. Kanter says the circular financing and cross-holdings around chips, data centers, and AI services can raise antitrust concerns, but he sees fears that regulation would weaken the U.S. versus China as a red herring.
Key takeaways
- Jonathan Kanter says AI regulation is inevitable but not imminent because Congress is dysfunctional and the Supreme Court has constrained agencies.
- Kanter wants AI rules built around duties of care and loyalty, including safety, privacy, creators’ rights, and loyalty to users.
- He argues penalties must exceed the benefits of misconduct so shareholders force compliance.
- The hosts say AI financing is already showing strain, with CoreWeave shares and bonds under pressure and new debt structures still being priced.
- Kanter says concerns that regulating U.S. AI would cede ground to China are a red herring; he argues safety and competitiveness can coexist.
Notable quotes
“effective, um, regulation in the era of AI is going to require a functional Congress”
“I think there's a sense this time around that AI is so even more potentially transformational than the internet, and that we need something in place to protect the public”
“the first principles, if if you don't know where you want to go, you can't get there, right”
“the consequences of violating those duties of care or those those duties of loyalty need to be significant enough that shareholders demand that companies comply”
How the episode opens
Effective, um, regulation in the era of AI is going to require a functional Congress. I think there's a sense this time around that AI is so even more potentially transformational than the internet, and that we need something in place to protect the public.
Hi, Miriam. — Hi, Hal. — Today, we're going to step back and talk about something that I think really looms over a lot of the conversations we've had about AI, artificial intelligence, which is what does the regulatory picture look like in the future? And there's a few different ways that I think we've talked about this. You have, obviously, the national security, um, human existence sort of considerations of what
Little thing.
Little thing. What do we need to do to make sure that AI doesn't run away and kill us all? Um, and then we have, I think, what what you've talked about in the show in the past is like, you know, the way that that that the AI companies sometimes talk about working together to address these things, okay, that sounds that maybe that's reassuring to investors, but it also sounds a bit collusive, and you know, what antitrust concerns are raised by that sort of behavior?
Yeah, I mean, I I was very puzzled when the two, um, CEOs of Anthropic and OpenAI came out and said, "We need to slow down," um, after this risk of ending humanity was raised. Because I was thinking, what are investors supposed to think about this? Uh, is it marketing?
Is this them saying, "Our models are so powerful. Look what they might be able to do. Is it a true desire to say, like, we need some rules of the road here?
Or is it them signaling to each other in the way that very disciplined competitors do?
From the episode’s captions: roughly the first two minutes, lightly cleaned. Keep watching on YouTube →
Topics
- ai regulation
- supreme court major questions doctrine
- spacex earnings
- tesla merger
- ai debt markets
Companies and tickers mentioned
- TSLA
- NWS
- NWSA
- SpaceX
- Tesla
- OpenAI
- News Corp
Watch the episode
Summary, takeaways and quote selection by Octagon. Quotes are short excerpts; the full conversation is in the episode.
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