- Alex Karp urges enforceable AI industry standards with penalties for harmful systems and executives
- He prioritizes accountability over creating new government AI regulatory agencies
- Karp opposes deliberately slowing AI development as a main safety strategy
Palantir chief executive Alex Karp has entered the debate over artificial intelligence safety, calling for enforceable industry standards and civil and criminal penalties for executives whose systems cause harm.
Speaking to CNBC's “Squawk on the Street” on Thursday, Karp said holding companies and their executives accountable should come before establishing new government agencies to regulate the fast-evolving technology.
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Karp also rejected the idea of deliberately slowing the pace of AI development as the industry's main strategy for addressing potential safety risks.
“I support reasonable guidelines that are enforced,” Karp said, arguing that companies and their senior executives should face consequences when their systems cause damage.
Karp also raised concerns about the potential nationalisation of frontier AI companies, though he did not advocate it as his preferred policy.
He suggested that the way some AI labs use proprietary business data to train models could expose them to significant legal risks.
“The view that I believe they have is, these businesses have to be nationalised because if you don't nationalise it every single one of my clients is going to sue,” Karp told CNBC.
His comments come amid a growing industry debate over whether AI development should be slowed to allow safety research to catch up.
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Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei recently called for a measured pace in developing advanced AI models, warning of risks including cyberattacks, bioterrorism and loss of control over powerful systems.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Tesla CEO Elon Musk backed the broader proposal, while Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis expressed support for the principle.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella welcomed the idea of pacing development and independent evaluations, but said international and academic voices should also be included.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg have opposed slowing AI progress, arguing that the industry should continue advancing while addressing safety and alignment risks.
US President Donald Trump has also rejected calls for a slowdown, saying, “Whoever wins AI wins,” amid concerns over competition with China.
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