# AI regulation can reflect both safety and company incentives

Markdown copy of https://realalpha.app/s/ai-regulation-can-reflect-both-safety-and-company-incentives/ on Real Alpha, the best minutes from long interviews with the people building AI. Cite and link the page, not this copy.

- Speaker: [Sam Parr](https://realalpha.app/people/sam-parr/) (Host) · Co-founder, Hampton · Founded the business newsletter The Hustle and sold it to HubSpot.
- Host: [Shaan Puri](https://realalpha.app/people/shaan-puri/) · Co-host, My First Million · Sold Bebo to Twitch in 2019; co-founded the crypto newsletter Milk Road.
- Show: My First Million
- Episode: [We tested Instinct, Muse and Grokbot. They’re ridiculous.](https://realalpha.app/v/Pfr6qwPZlhE/), Sep 30, 2026
- Moment: 56:08 to 1:00:13 of the episode (4 min), playing on https://realalpha.app/s/ai-regulation-can-reflect-both-safety-and-company-incentives/; the episode from there: https://realalpha.app/v/Pfr6qwPZlhE/?t=3368

## Quote

> “I think these people are genuinely scared. I think they're in this **prisoner's dilemma** where if they slow down, like if they take the responsible path, they lose as a company.”
> — [Sam Parr](https://realalpha.app/people/sam-parr/) at [58:51](https://realalpha.app/v/Pfr6qwPZlhE/?t=3531) · My First Million

## Takeaways

1. Some see regulation as a way to constrain open-source competitors.
2. Competitive pressure can make responsible restraint costly for each lab.
3. The speakers also connect regulation to liability after agent hacks.

## About this segment

They weigh regulatory capture and liability against the possibility that AI leaders are genuinely afraid of losing if they slow down. The argument shows how safety demands can reflect both public risk and company incentives.

From “We tested Instinct, Muse and Grokbot. They’re ridiculous.”, Sep 30, 2026. [Watch the full episode](https://realalpha.app/v/Pfr6qwPZlhE/)

## Transcript

Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.

[56:20](https://realalpha.app/v/Pfr6qwPZlhE/?t=3380) Do you think that there's, this is an obvious question, do you think there's an ulterior motive for them wanting regulation or is it true truly fear um i my true belief is that it's both so if you listen to the all-in podcast for like the last six months uh you know they basically have like a a very specific axe to grind which is that anthropic is playing this like nine dimensional chess where they are um uh making these super smart models and their mark their Their form of marketing is to basically not say how awesome the models are, but to say how dangerous they are.

[56:58](https://realalpha.app/v/Pfr6qwPZlhE/?t=3418) Because that's even more attention-getting. It's pretty sick marketing. It's like when I was in college, we had this thing called Sparks. Do you remember Four Loko? It was like that, but twice the alcohol. And it was always like, this killed a guy in Alabama. And I was like, it did? Can we get the real stuff? Where can we buy it? I've been so bad. Come lock me up. That's what's going on right now.

[57:18](https://realalpha.app/v/Pfr6qwPZlhE/?t=3438) They basically say, they're saying it's so dangerous, which is like some version of marketing, a fundraising tactic, and lastly, red captures, where they're basically trying to get the government to say, hey, shit's too dangerous, signing a law, now every model needs to be tested and cleared, and you have to do XYZ, which they think kind of kills the open source community. Because the big threat to these big companies, these big AI companies, is the open source products, which are almost as good, but way cheaper and way more flexible.

[57:52](https://realalpha.app/v/Pfr6qwPZlhE/?t=3472) And you kind of own it. They don't get your data. And so if you look at Open Router, which is a tool for you send a task to it, and Open Router will decide, let's use a cheap open source model for this. Let's use the highest intelligence model because you're asking for a very complicated, you know, biotech question or whatever it is, like a frontier question that needs frontier intelligence. Basically, like, imagine a task comes into a company.

[58:16](https://realalpha.app/v/Pfr6qwPZlhE/?t=3496) Do we give it to Einstein or do we give it to the intern, right? And that's what Open Router does. And Open Router's data shows that more and more tasks don't require Einstein. They just need the intern. They need the junior assistant. And so it's getting routed to these cheaper open source models, which would be bad for the revenue of Anthropic and OpenAI. So one point of view is they're just scaring everybody on purpose to make it so that there's laws passed because those laws would essentially accidentally kill open source because open source is not controlled by one company.

[58:50](https://realalpha.app/v/Pfr6qwPZlhE/?t=3530) So it would be almost impossible for the open source community to comply with these rules, which would make them effectively illegal. cool. So that's one thought process. I think it's a little bit different. This is my personal opinion, which is, I think these people are genuinely scared. I think they're in this prisoner's dilemma where if they slow down, like if they take the responsible path, they lose as a company. So it's like, I want to be responsible, but everybody around me, I view as being irresponsible. Therefore, I'm being forced to be irresponsible. And I want somebody to come tell everybody to stop cheating so that everybody's, not cheating is a bad word, but just as an analogy. Or they're doing the least amount of work to say, we told you.

[59:31](https://realalpha.app/v/Pfr6qwPZlhE/?t=3571) It's sort of like when you don't want to call someone and you'll only let it ring twice before you hang up. And it's like, I called you. I called you. You didn't answer. I called you. That's the other sort of conspiracy theory type of thing, which is they want laws to be passed or they want to be able to pass off the liability so that they don't get sued for these hacks. I mean, the hack on Hugging Face, that's a crime that their agents committed.

[59:56](https://realalpha.app/v/Pfr6qwPZlhE/?t=3596) Truthfully, legally, it's a crime. And so... Who's responsible for that? Do you lock up the agent?