Friday Sep 25
GOVERNANCEOther

The Man Who Said No FDA For AI

25SEP
FINRA MODELSAID NOBUILDS IT

OpenAI, Anthropic and Google DeepMind are building a FINRA-style self-regulator. Sriram Krishnan, who spent a year arguing against an AI regulator, is floated to run it.

The body would review frontier models up to 30 days before release. Industry-funded, industry-run. Chris Lehane says the labs will pursue it with or without government support.

Demis Hassabis floated the FINRA model on July 14. Lehane confirmed the coordination on September 15. Anthropic and Google have not publicly confirmed it, which tells you how firm this is.

Meta, xAI and Nvidia opposed new government-led regulation the same day. Cohere's Aidan Gomez calls the plan a cartel by any other name. Not everyone is invited.

full brief & sources

⚡ Why this matters

  • Three labs writing their own pre-release review rules is the entire fight over AI governance compressed into one structure.
  • FINRA let markets expand fast under the appearance of oversight. That precedent is being borrowed deliberately, not by accident.
  • If this lands, compliance becomes a fixed entry price. Labs pay it from petty cash. Startups pay it from seed rounds.

🔍 What happened

  • At a Washington briefing on September 15, OpenAI chief global affairs officer Chris Lehane confirmed that OpenAI, Anthropic and Google DeepMind had been coordinating on safety protocols for several weeks.
  • The proposed structure is an industry-funded self-regulatory body, tentatively the Frontier AI Standards Agency, reviewing models up to 30 days before release. Target launch is end of 2026 or early 2027.
  • Demis Hassabis at Google DeepMind floated the FINRA model publicly on July 14. Anthropic and Google have not publicly confirmed the specific coordination, leaving the initiative unformalized.
  • Sriram Krishnan, White House senior AI policy adviser from January 2025 to June 2026, has been named among candidates to lead it. He argued publicly that there would be no FDA for AI and that regulation is sand in the gears.
  • Meta, xAI and Nvidia openly opposed new government-led regulation at Dreamforce on September 15. The coalition is a bloc, not an industry-wide standard.
  • An alternative path exists in Congress: the FRONTIER Act, H.R. 9925, from Representatives Obernolte and Trahan, would license independent verification organizations through NIST to assess developers every six months.

💬 Smart takes

  • Chris Lehane, OpenAI: the labs should pursue industry-led standards with or without government support. That phrasing is the whole strategy in eight words.
  • Aidan Gomez, Cohere CEO: "a cartel by any other name," drawing a parallel to the SEC's 1975 NRSRO designation, which entrenched three ratings agencies for decades.
  • David Sacks, White House AI czar: has characterized the industry's self-regulatory proposals as potential regulatory capture or an election-season distraction. The skeptic here sits inside the administration.

🧭 Where this goes

  1. Likelyno formal charter before year end. The initiative stays in strategic ambiguity while the labs test the political weather.
  2. PossibleCongress moves on the FRONTIER Act and bypasses the industry body entirely.
  3. Wild CardKrishnan takes the job, and the man who said there would be no FDA for AI becomes the first thing resembling one.

🥄 The Spoon Take

Watch who is not at the table. Meta, xAI, Nvidia and every open-weight developer are outside it. A standards body with three members is not a standard. It is an agreement between competitors about what counts as safe.

🤔 Pushback

Nothing is formalized. Anthropic and Google have not confirmed it publicly, no charter exists, and Krishnan has not taken any job. This is coordination talk, not an institution.

·TechCrunch - OpenAI, Anthropic, Google in talks on AI safety for weeks·Cohere - Who gets to define the rules for AI·Forkast - Three frontier labs are building a FINRA-style safety body·AI Weekly - Google, OpenAI, Anthropic court Sriram Krishnan for AI safety body