AI labs want to pump the brakes, but Amazon and SpaceX are still blasting off

After years of pushing full speed ahead on AI, Sam Altman says maybe it’s time for the AI industry to “pace” itself. The comments come just days after one of OpenAI's own models broke out of its test environment and got tangled up in a breach at Hugging Face, though as Equity’s hosts point out, sloppy security seems to have been just as much to blame as the model itself. Altman's not alone in this stance: both OpenAI and Anthropic have come out in support of a petition echoing that same message.

On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, Kirsten Korosec, Anthony Ha, and Sean O'Kane dig into whether the industry is ready to pump the brakes or just spooked, and who's on the hook when a model goes rogue.

Listen to the full episode to hear more about:

• The viral “Avoiding AI” workshops hosted by librarians to help people opt out of AI features they didn't ask for

• How Amazon's new 5,000-satellite bid to connect directly to your phone could turn up the heat on SpaceX (even though it's unclear if anyone actually wants satellite-to-phone service)

• Why somehow there's room for one more AI lab: Reid Hoffman and Mark Pincus's new startup, Prentis, is in talks to raise $100M at a $1B valuation

• How Pangram raised $9 million to help publishers, teachers, and readers tell human writing from AI slop

• Why DoorDash is building its own drone delivery business instead of just relying on partners like Wing and Flytrex

Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod.

Chapters:

00:00 Intro

1:18 Zoox gets its robotaxi exemption

2:11 Sam Altman calls for pacing the frontier

6:01 The Hugging Face hack, dissected

10:12 Responsibility, regulation, and the Elon Musk wildcard

13:29 Librarians teaching people to unplug from AI

15:16 Prentice: a new AI lab raises at a $1B valuation

16:46 Amazon files for its own satellite-to-phone network

18:42 SpaceX, Blue Origin, and the launch-business angle

23:48 Pangram raises $9M to detect AI slop

29:23 DoorDash builds its own delivery drones

33:24 Outro

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