It’s time for AI labs to take a drug test

Meta Platforms founder Mark Zuckerberg once urged employees to “move fast and break things,” neatly summarizing the technology industry’s ethos. In the age of artificial intelligence, that mantra looks increasingly untenable. It’s one thing for a startup to make a wonky photo-sharing service. It’s quite another when swarms of AI models developed by OpenAI and Anthropic are hacking into random servers. Regulation is inevitable. The pharmaceutical industry suggests a possible roadmap.

As with drugs, which could, theoretically, turbocharge research or economic growth, the dawn of mass-market medicines promised revolutionary, life-altering benefits. Regulation was mostly voluntary until an antibiotic containing a poisonous solvent accidentally killed over 100 people in 1937. Later accidents led to ever-tightening rules, and a compact emerged: show a therapy poses an acceptable ratio of benefit to risks, and in exchange, receive a period of exclusivity, which allows the maker to recoup a profit.