Questions mount over what an AI 'slowdown' would look like

"We know that these systems are getting more powerful, but we don't know where and how they're going to be used, and we haven't figured out essentially a way of taking full advantage of their potential. My only concern in rushing to regulate now, where there's still a lot of open questions, is that it could actually backfire."We also can't deny the fact that underpinning this entire tech revolution is an ocean of investor cash."I'm not worried about the existential risks of AI, I'm worried about the corporate greed of the companies that are creating it," says Sasha Luccioni, the founder of Sustainable AI.Leading computer scientist Professor dame Wendy Hall, who has advised the UN about AI, says the current crisis is all about the companies not behaving responsibly enough.She likens the current situation to a farmer having a bull in a field which escapes and causes destruction – and the farmer blames the bull."Of course it's not the bull's fault – it's the farmer," she says. Clearly, the fences weren't robust enough, and that is exactly what she says we are seeing with AI guardrails right now.But if those guardrails become too restrictive, could this spell the end of AI?Some believe there is a more secretive, politically-motivated push for a rules-based clampdown in order to "regulate AI into oblivion" as Parker Thayer, an investigative researcher at the Conservative-leaning Capital Research Centre think-tank, put it on X this week.