# Amodei favors federal AI standards over a state-law moratorium

Markdown copy of https://realalpha.app/s/amodei-favors-federal-ai-standards-over-a-state-law/ on Real Alpha, the best minutes from long interviews with the people building AI. Cite and link the page, not this copy.

- Speaker: [Dario Amodei](https://realalpha.app/builders/dario-amodei/) · Dario Amodei is CEO of Anthropic. · Co-founded Anthropic, the AI safety company behind Claude; earlier led OpenAI's GPT-2 and GPT-3 research.
- Host: [Dwarkesh Patel](https://realalpha.app/people/dwarkesh-patel/) · Host, Dwarkesh Podcast · Co-wrote The Scaling Era, an oral history of AI; named to TIME100 AI.
- Show: Dwarkesh Podcast
- Episode: [Dario Amodei — “We are near the end of the exponential”](https://realalpha.app/v/n1E9IZfvGMA/), Feb 13, 2026
- Moment: 1:37:15 to 1:44:40 of the episode (7 min), playing on https://realalpha.app/s/amodei-favors-federal-ai-standards-over-a-state-law/; the episode from there: https://realalpha.app/v/n1E9IZfvGMA/?t=5835

## Quote

> “we're going to ban all state regulation of AI for 10 years with **no apparent plan** to do any federal regulation of AI”
> — [Dario Amodei](https://realalpha.app/builders/dario-amodei/) at [1:37:49](https://realalpha.app/v/n1E9IZfvGMA/?t=5869) · Dwarkesh Podcast

## Takeaways

1. A moratorium without federal safeguards would leave a regulatory gap.
2. He supports federal preemption when the rules are well designed.
3. Start with transparency, then address risks as evidence emerges.

## About this segment

Dario Amodei opposes a 10-year ban on state AI laws without federal rules, while supporting federal standards that preempt conflicting state laws. He favors starting with transparency and targeting demonstrated risks.

From “Dario Amodei — “We are near the end of the exponential””, Feb 13, 2026. [Watch the full episode](https://realalpha.app/v/n1E9IZfvGMA/)

## Transcript

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

[1:37:18](https://realalpha.app/v/n1E9IZfvGMA/?t=5838) your anthropics position against the federal moratorium on state AI laws. Yes. So I don't know. There's many different things going on at once, right? I think that particular law is dumb. I think it was clearly made by legislators who just probably had little idea what AI models could do and not do. They're like, AI models serving as, that just sounds scary. Like, I don't want, I don't want that to happen. So, you know, we're not, we're not in favor of that. Right. But, but, but, you know, that, that wasn't the thing that was being voted on. The thing that was being voted on is we're going to ban all state regulation of AI for 10 years with no apparent plan to do any federal regulation of AI, which would take Congress to past, which is a very high bar. So, you know, the idea that we'd ban states from doing anything for

[1:38:08](https://realalpha.app/v/n1E9IZfvGMA/?t=5888) 10 years and people said they had a plan for federal government, but, you know, there was no actual, there was no proposal on the table. There was no actual attempt. Given the serious dangers that I lay out in adolescence of technology around things like the, you know, kind of biological weapons and bioterrorism, autonomy risk, and the timelines we've been talking about, like 10 years is an eternity. Like that's, that's a, that's a, I think that's a crazy thing to do. So if, if that's the choice, if that's what you force us to choose, then, then we're going to, we're going to choose not to have that moratorium. And, you know, I think the, the, the benefits of that position exceed the costs, but it's, it's not a perfect position if that's the choice. Now, I think the thing that we should do, the thing that I would support is the federal government

[1:38:56](https://realalpha.app/v/n1E9IZfvGMA/?t=5936) should step in, not saying states you can't regulate, but here's what we're going to do. And states, you can't differ from this, right? Like, I think preemption is fine in the sense of saying that federal government says, here's our standard. This applies to everyone. States can't do something different. That would be something I would support if it would be done in the right way. But this idea of states, you can't do anything and we're not doing anything either. That struck us as, you know, very much not making sense. And I think will not age well, is already starting to not age well with all the backlash that you've seen. Now, in terms of what we would want, I mean, you know, the things we've talked about are starting with transparency standards, you know, in order to monitor some of these autonomy risks and bioterrorism risks.

[1:39:48](https://realalpha.app/v/n1E9IZfvGMA/?t=5988) As the risks become more serious, as we get more evidence for them, then I think we could be more aggressive in some targeted ways and say, hey, AI bioterrorism is really a threat. Let's pass a law that kind of forces people to have classifiers. And I could even imagine – it depends. It depends how serious the threat it ends up being. We don't know for sure. Then we need to pursue this in an intellectually honest way where we say ahead of time the risk has not emerged yet.

[1:40:16](https://realalpha.app/v/n1E9IZfvGMA/?t=6016) But I could certainly imagine with the pace that things are going that, you know, I could imagine a world where later this year we say, hey, this AI bioterrorism stuff is really serious. We should do something about it. We should put it in a federal standard. And if the federal government won't act, we should put it in a state standard. I could totally see that. I'm concerned about a world where if you just consider the pace of progress you're expecting, the life cycle of legislation, you know, the benefits are, as you say, because of diffusion lag, the benefits are slow enough that I really do think this patchwork of on the current trajectory, this patchwork of state laws would prohibit.

[1:40:56](https://realalpha.app/v/n1E9IZfvGMA/?t=6056) I mean, having an emotional chatbot friend is something that freaks people out than just imagine the kinds of actual benefits from AI we want normal people to be able to experience from improvements in health and health span and improvements in mental health and so forth. Whereas at the same time, it seems like you think the dangers are already on the horizon. And I just don't see that much. It seems like would be especially injurious to the benefits of AI as compared to the dangers of AI.

[1:41:23](https://realalpha.app/v/n1E9IZfvGMA/?t=6083) So that's maybe where the cost benefit makes less sense to me. So there's a few things here, right? I mean, people talk about there being thousands of these state laws. First of all, the vast mass majority of them do not pass. And, you know, the world works a certain way in theory, but like just because a law has been passed doesn't mean it's really enforced, right? The people, you know, implementing it may be like, oh, my God, this is stupid.

[1:41:48](https://realalpha.app/v/n1E9IZfvGMA/?t=6108) It would mean shutting off like, you know, everything that's ever been built and everything that's ever been built in Tennessee. So, you know, very often laws are interpreted in like, you know, a way that makes them not as dangerous or not as harmful. On the same side, of course, you have to worry if you're passing a law to stop a bad thing. You had this problem as well. Yeah. Look, my my look, I mean, my basic view is, you know, if if if, you know, we could decide, you know, what laws were passed and how things were done, which, you know, we're only one small input input into that.

[1:42:21](https://realalpha.app/v/n1E9IZfvGMA/?t=6141) I would deregulate a lot of the stuff around the health benefits of AI. I think I don't worry as much about the kind of chatbot laws. I actually worry more about the drug approval process where I think AI models are going to greatly accelerate the rate at which we discover drugs and just the pipeline will get jammed up. Like the pipeline will not be prepared to like process all, all of the stuff that's going through it.

[1:42:52](https://realalpha.app/v/n1E9IZfvGMA/?t=6172) So, um, you know, I, I think, I think reform of the regulatory process to buy us more towards, we have a lot of things coming where the safety and the efficacy is actually going to be really crisp and clear. Like, I mean, a beautiful thing, really, really crisp and clear and like really, really effective. But, you know, and maybe we don't need all this, all this, like all this superstructure around it that was designed around an era of drugs that barely work and often have serious side effects.

[1:43:24](https://realalpha.app/v/n1E9IZfvGMA/?t=6204) But at the same time, I think we should be ramping up quite significantly the, you know, this kind of safety and security legislation. legislation. And, you know, like I've said, you know, starting with transparency is my view of trying not to hamper the industry, right? Trying to find the right balance. I'm worried about it. Some people criticize my essay for saying that's too slow. The dangers of AI will come too soon if we do that. Well, basically, I kind of think like the last six months and maybe the next few months are going to be about transparency. And then if these risks emerge, when we're more certain of them, which I think we might be as soon as later this year, then I think we need to act very fast in the areas that we've actually seen the risk. Like, I think the only way to do this is to be

[1:44:12](https://realalpha.app/v/n1E9IZfvGMA/?t=6252) nimble. Now, the legislative process is normally not nimble, but we need to emphasize to everyone involved the urgency of this. That's why I'm sending this message of urgency, right? That's why I wrote Adolescents of Technology. I wanted policymakers to read it. I wanted economists to read it. I want national security professionals to read it. You know, I want decision makers to read it so that they have some hope of acting faster than they would have otherwise. Is there