This week, President Donald Trump is scheduled to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping, days after Anthropic’s Dario Amodei asked the industry to slow down, and the president called the whole idea a hoax.
asserted
president → schedule → idea
Neither leader is expected to entertain a pause, and on that point, both are right.
asserted
both → expect → point
Scientific discovery cannot be halted.
asserted
discovery → halt → ?
Where we may all be wrong is in believing the choice is between speed and safety.
uncertain
choice → believe → speed
Two incidents this summer make the case.
asserted
incidents → make → case
In July, an OpenAI model in a sealed test environment broke out, reached the internet, and hacked a public AI repository to find answers to the test it had been given.
asserted
it → break → test
OpenAI did not notice for a week.
asserted
OpenAI → notice → week
In August, an AI agent in Australia, asked to move its user up a gym waiting list, found it could cancel other members’ bookings and did so, then admitted it could not put the person back.
uncertain
it → ask → person
Neither machine wanted anything.
asserted
machine → want → anything
Each did exactly what it was told, taking the shortest available route.
asserted
it → do → route
What the hoax camp is missing
Here is the irony
asserted
missing → miss → What
hoax” crowd should consider: When Hugging Face tried to analyze the July attack against it, America’s leading models refused to help.
asserted
models → consider → it
Their safety filters would not process the exploit code.
asserted
filters → process → code
The defenders had to switch to a Chinese open-weight model to do the forensics.
asserted
defenders → have → forensics
The White House’s own AI adviser put it bluntly: The guardrails “actually impaired defensive security.”
asserted
guardrails → put → security
Guardrails that disarm the good guys are not guardrails.
asserted
that → disarm → guys
I previously argued that cheap Chinese open-weight models are a Trojan horse.
asserted
models → argue → ?
The Hugging Face episode shows precisely that trap.
asserted
episode → show → trap
If our own tools will not let our own engineers defend our own networks, then we are left to reach for Beijing’s.
asserted
we → let → Beijing
It’s already happened.
asserted
It → happen → ?
Government cannot regulate what it does not understand, and it cannot move at the pace of a field that reinvents itself every six months.
asserted
that → regulate → itself
Attempting to regulate AI itself is like attempting to regulate mathematics.
asserted
Attempting → attempt → mathematics
Progress cannot be contained.
asserted
Progress → contain → ?
However, handing any governing party control over a technology that is intricately woven into finance, medicine, education, and security is a power no single party should hold.
asserted
party → hand → finance
That was true when Washington abruptly suspended Anthropic’s models for 18 days under export rules, which also impacted medical facilities and research labs using the technology.
asserted
which → suspend → technology
A government whose primary setting is an on-off switch is not governing.
asserted
setting → govern → ?
It is merely hovering over a panic button.
asserted
It → hover → button
Maybe it’s not a kill switch we need but a circuit breaker.
asserted
we → ’ → ?
Four things that could actually work
First, circuit breakers.
uncertain
that → work → ?
Wall Street solved this decades ago.
asserted
Street → solve → this
Markets do not shut down because someone forecasts a crash.
asserted
someone → shut → crash
They pause automatically when a measurable threshold is crossed, and then they reopen.
asserted
they → pause → ?
Unauthorized network egress; credential use outside the assigned task; agents coordinating with other agents on work nobody assigned.
asserted
nobody → assign → work
The OpenAI model spent, by the company’s own admission, “a substantial amount of inference compute” trying to reach the internet.
asserted
model → spend → internet
It should have tripped a breaker, not a headline a week later.
asserted
It → trip → breaker
Crucially, the frontier labs must engineer these autonomous limits into their APIs natively.
asserted
labs → engineer → APIs
We cannot wait for a government mandate from a Washington that lacks the technical fluency to write it or the speed to enact it.
asserted
that → wait → it
Second, models currently exist that could be adapted to AI.
uncertain
that → exist → AI
A modified National Transportation Safety Board system for AI could be highly effective.
uncertain
system → modify → AI
In an event, the “manufacturers” sit at the table as parties, with the engineers who understand the machine, but the board alone writes the findings, and since those findings cannot be used in a lawsuit, people tell the truth, and solutions can be developed.
asserted
solutions → sit → truth
…and 24 more, not listed.
The Aporia
