Who should control AI? Are the corporations that release the powerful technology the arbiters of its fate? Or should that power be vested in the hands of the government?
For the billionaire, it’s up to the government, and therefore, the people, to make specific use decisions. Otherwise, tech companies could imperil democracy.
“We need to stick to a position that this is in the hands of the people,” he said. “Anyone who says that a defense company should be going beyond the law, beyond what legislators and elected leaders say in terms of who they’ll work with and not, you are effectively saying you do not believe in this democratic experiment, that you want a ‘corporatocracy.’
“In all cases, whoever the United States government tells me that I can and cannot sell to,” he continued, “to have any other position is to fall further into … basically corporate executives having de facto control over U.S. foreign policy.”
Anthropic didn’t immediately respond to Fortune’s request for comment.
“What you would have had is a world where Silicon Valley executives would have had more foreign policy power than the president of the United States,” Luckey said. “That’s really, really dangerous.”
For Luckey, it comes down to whether top-level decisions on AI’s usage belong to Silicon Valley or Washington. His view is that, regardless of who is in the White House, tech companies, and the private sector more broadly, have a responsibility to adhere to that administration’s foreign policy decisions.
