Comment by Nathan Sanders

I think lip service is probably the right expression to use here, because, you know, there are really interesting projects happening at some of the big AI development companies, on the one hand, to try and enforce rules on their own in a voluntary way, for example, about political applications of AI. And two, to try and develop AI systems in a way that integrates public input to try and align those systems to public values and preferences. I think some of that research is really interesting. [...] However, I think lip service is an appropriate term because that's entirely voluntary, and the lesson that we should learn from social media is that it is not necessarily in these companies' interests to continue or meaningfully enact the outcomes of that research. We shouldn't trust them to do that. We need regulation to enforce those ethical expectations on companies [...] And by the way, we should have alternatives to the corporate development of AI that are based on fundamentally different incentives that incentivize the development of AI towards the public benefit rather than purely for private profit. Unverified source (2026)