'Zero' chance A.I. will destroy humanity, David Sacks says

Dasha Burns interviewing David Sacks.

David Sacks, a top Silicon Valley venture capitalist, said Wednesday that there is no existential threat posed by A.I. "if we do things right."

Sacks, who was the White House A.I. czar until March of this year but remains a close adviser to the Trump administration on technology-related matters, was asked by Politico's Dasha Burns about the growing concern over A.I., which is coming mostly from Democrats, but some Republicans, too, as well as a chorus of Democrats calling for government regulation. Sacks noted that there already is a fair amount of regulation on the tech companies creating A.I. products.

"I hear Democrats saying that the administration favors some sort of laissez-faire policy. The reality is we don't have a laissez-faire government. We have a highly regulated administrative state and we already have a lot of laws and regulations that pertain to A.I., and we have a lot of administrative agencies that promulgate regulations related to A.I.," Sacks said. "For example, harms like cyber attacks or privacy violations or child safety or fraud -- they are all already regulated."

He went on to say that every A.I. company is subject to general market liability for any harm done that might be by one of their products. He also said he was open to discussing even further regulation, but the current climate of the discourse makes doing so difficult. "It's hard to have that conversation when you have this fear mongering going on," Sacks said. "There has been, you could say, an animosity towards the tech industry."

When asked about the chances that A.I. will destroy humanity by the end of the decade, as a former OpenAI and Anthropic employee suggested last week, Sacks replied, "I think that if we do the right things here, if the labs take responsibility for the development of their products, then I think it is zero."

Watch a highlight from the interview below.