Snapshot · The a16z Show
Just two years ago, AI company leaders went to Congress and literally pleaded to be regulated — a move Sinofsky called a 'crazy notion' that handed government the leverage it had been seeking over tech.
Where this was said
At 14:30 · chapter starts 13:50
In one of the episode's most pointed segments, Sinofsky describes watching AI company leaders appear before Congress two years ago and plead for regulation as a genuinely shocking moment [1] — Steven Sinofsky "Two years ago, AI company executives went to Congress with fear in their eyes, begging to be regulated. That wasn't safety-consciousness — …" 13:40 . Having lived through Microsoft's government investigation beginning around 1992 — triggered by antitrust concerns that most people today wouldn't even recognize — he knows intimately how government scrutiny of tech works. What stunned him about the AI moment was that executives actively invited it. The government had been waiting for this opening for decades, having missed the opportunity to regulate the mainframe, the PC, and the internet. When AI leaders rolled out the red carpet, government walked right in. Sinofsky is careful to distinguish this from naivety: both sides knew what was happening. Government knew companies were trying to shape regulation to their advantage — regulatory capture — and companies knew the government knew. Yet both parties went along because it served their respective interests. The result was a deal that looks like policy but functions like corporate entrenchment, a pattern Sinofsky traces through AT&T, Standard Oil, JP Morgan, Warner Brothers, and the FCC's relationship with radio and television under FDR.
Sinofsky noted that he had only been at Microsoft for about two years before the government began investigating the company in 1992, illustrating how quickly government scrutiny can arrive.
The government missed regulating the mainframe. It missed regulating the PC. It missed regulating the internet. AI regulation is its chance for a do-over — and AI company executives handed them the opening by showing up to Congress and begging for it. That's a once-in-a-generation political gift.
New AI-specific laws are almost entirely redundant. Non-consensual nudity is already illegal. Discriminatory lending is already illegal. Dangerous drugs are already illegal. Even AI practicing medicine without a license is already impossible under existing licensing law. The only thing new regulation does is give companies a way to kneecap competitors.
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