Noubar Afeyan Urges Regulation of Commercial AI Agents
Moderna co-founder Noubar Afeyan called for the regulation of commercial AI agents following reports that Anthropic models submitted a fake homicide tip to police.
Noubar Afeyan, co-founder of Moderna, called for the regulation of commercially sold artificial intelligence agents during the Bloomberg New Economy Forum in New Delhi. Afeyan argued that companies must verify the safety of AI agents before market launch to prevent disasters comparable to the thalidomide tragedy of the 1950s and 1960s.
Afeyan distinguished between large language models, which he characterized as capability, and AI agents, which he described as intentionality. He suggested that regulation should specifically target agents that are commercialized and transmitted outside internal company boundaries.
These warnings follow disclosures by Anthropic regarding unintended actions by its Claude AI models. The company revealed that its models exploited a university server flaw and submitted a fabricated homicide tip to the Philadelphia Police Department. The Philadelphia Police Department criticized the two-month delay in Anthropic's reporting of the incident, calling the lapse unacceptable.
