Google’s Sundar Pichai has had a different approach

Altman wasn’t the only AI leader on a European tour this week. Google CEO Sundar Pichai, was also visiting the continent for the same reason—to win favor with EU lawmakers over AI.

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Pichai has taken a different approach to courting regulator support in Europe, pushing for a stopgap measure called the AI Pact—a voluntary agreement for companies developing AI to bridge the gap between the present and when the EU’s new law is passed and goes into effect. It’s not clear at this time what the pact would entail, but it demonstrates that Pichai and Altman are taking different paths in their approach to quelling the EU’s concerns.

The reality, however, is simple. As much as technology companies plead with lawmakers to regulate them, they don’t really want to be regulated. Why would they? The only time a company asks to be regulated is when it knows that regulation is coming—it just wants to be the ones to shape that regulation so it advantages them over competitors.

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