Elon Musk talks up AI safety while fighting regulation in wild week of strange alliances

Elon Musk talks up AI safety while fighting regulation in wild week of strange alliances. Musk's positions on AI safety and his alliances in his decade-plus in the industry have often changed dramatically.

What happened

Philip Pacheco | Afp | Getty ImagesElon Musk had a head-spinning week in AI. "'Some scary outcomes'Since Musk's early days in AI, he's simultaneously drummed up public fears of world-ending threats from AI "superintelligence" while building out his own AI businesses and fighting off regulation. Elon Musk was thrilledThe billionaire and the party have developed a symbiotic relationship to spread their far-right views both in Germany and the USThe Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party rattled European politics this week after a convincing victory in a German state election, which placed it only a few seats away from forming the country’s first state-level far right government since the second world war.

In the past week, Musk has agreed with the CEOs of Anthropic and OpenAI, while getting contradicted by President Trump and Nvidia's Jensen Huang. "You can always escalate the amount of regulatory oversight, but it is very difficult to reduce it," Musk said in a session at the All-In Summit this week. In this articleTSLAFollow your favorite stocksCREATE FREE ACCOUNTSpaceX founder Elon Musk addresses members of the media during a press conference announcing new developments of the Crew Dragon reusable spacecraft, at SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne, California, Oct.

"Behind the scenes, the Wall Street Journal reported this week that Musk had joined Huang and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg in advising President Trump to oppose an industry-funded regulator.

The wider picture

Musk didn't immediately respond to a request for comment for this story. watch nowVIDEO8:2308:23Anthropic's Dario Amodei calls for slower pace of AI developmentSquawk Box EuropeThe back and forth in just the past week is a microcosm of Musk's history in artificial intelligence, dating back to an early check he wrote to fund DeepMind, which Google acquired in 2014. "Elon Musk arrives at federal court in Oakland, Calif. , on April 30, 2026. Elon Musk invested in OpenAI early on believing it would be a non-profit, but is now suing OpenAI and its CEO Sam Altman for allegedly deceiving him by developing OpenAI into a for-profit company.

Following Amodei's essay last weekend imploring the industry to "pace the frontier," Musk posted on X, "Dario is right. Brandon Dill | The Washington Post | Getty ImagesMusk's recent track record on AI safety has been rocky. And at xAI — now known as SpaceXAI — Musk sued to stop state regulations that would ban Grok's "nudify" features in Minnesota, and that would require his company to be transparent about the data used to train its models in California.

As Musk and his peers and rivals debate the right approach to AI safety, and whether the government should have a big role or no role at all, lawmakers and third-party researchers are growing increasingly skeptical of the industry's ability to police itself. "WATCH: On the ground at Elon Musk's Memphis empire watch nowVIDEO29:0129:01How Elon Musk's AI empire in Memphis became a cautionary taleTechChoose CNBC as your preferred source on Google and never miss a moment from the most trusted name in business news.

What has been reported

Skip to main contentSkip to navigation Elon Musk, Dario Amodei and Sam Altman. Composite: Getty ImagesView image in fullscreenElon Musk, Dario Amodei and Sam Altman. It’s a dereliction of duty that will make AI less safeIt is hard to get Sam Altman, Elon Musk and Dario Amodei to agree on much. An international treaty on minimum safety standards will not be easy – but it is still worth trying, and doing so should be the president’s highest priority at his talks with Xi Jinping this month.

Explore more on these topicsAI (artificial intelligence)Donald TrumpOpenAIAnthropicSam AltmanElon MuskGrok AIcommentShareReuse this contentMost viewedMost viewed “Gut gemacht! ” Musk posted on X a week ago, using the German phrase for “well done” as he congratulated AfD party leader, Alice Weidel. Boosting the international far rightAs Musk became more involved in politics in 2024, backing Donald Trump’s reelection with over $100m of his own money, he formed alliances with several other international far-right leaders who hold anti-immigration views and antipathy for democratic institutions.

Musk has appeared onstage with Argentina’s chainsaw-wielding Javier Milei, presented an award to Italy’s ultraconservative prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, then attacked Italian judges ruling on migrant rights and gave a livestreamed speech at UK anti-Islam activist Tommy Robinson’s rally where Musk claimed immigration was causing “the destruction of Britain”.

What happens next

There was a huge spike of attention from traditional media for Weidel in that moment, and a lot of this attention was actually connected with Musk. ”Weeks after hosting the livestream with Weidel, Musk also appeared via livestream at an AfD rally. Explore more on these topicsElon MuskAlternative für Deutschland (AfD)GermanyThe far rightThe super-richfeaturesShareReuse this contentMost viewedMost viewed After agreeing with bitter rivals Dario Amodei and Sam Altman in their call for foundation model labs to slow the pace of development, Musk was contradicted by President Donald Trump and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, who said AI companies actually need to go faster.

" Speaking on a panel at the All-In Summit on Tuesday that included longtime friend and former White House AI czar David Sacks, Musk took a more middle-of-the-road approach. He urged companies to test each other's new models to identify and fix safety issues before they get released, an option he sees as preferable to the government taking a heavy-handed regulatory position in AI. The year after that deal, Musk co-founded OpenAI with Altman and others as a nonprofit research lab.

While Musk has long expressed controversial and often conflicting views in AI, torching friendships along the way with the likes of Google co-founder Larry Page and Altman, the stakes now are higher than ever.

The report has been compiled by The Daily Waves using information reported across cnbc.com, theguardian.com. Details are presented according to the information available at the time of publication and may change as authorities, organisers or other relevant parties provide updates.