Dell Technologies CEO Michael Dell said artificial intelligence models “need safeguards and controls” as debate intensifies over the threats that rapidly evolving technology may pose to humans.
“I think we’ve always had the technology to do great things, but maybe not so great things. A fire can heat a house. It can also burn down an entire village. So that’s not good. So we have to have safeguards and controls in place,” Dell said in an interview with CNBC’s David Faber on Tuesday.
“Governments have a role to play,” Dell said, adding that companies developing AI tools should also have “limited privileges.”
He did not elaborate on what the government’s role would be, saying only that he was “not a policy maker.”
In recent weeks, researchers and industry experts have been discussing the potentially devastating possibilities that could arise from self-improving AI models. The outcry was sparked by former anthropologist Jacob Coxon, who quit his job and warned in a Sept. 8 post that Frontier Laboratories was “risking its life” in the race for superintelligence.
Since then, technology CEOs antropic with Dario Amodei OpenAI Sam Altman supported calls for more regulation and a slowdown in frontier model development across the industry. But the Trump administration remains adamantly opposed to a coordinated economic slowdown or other restrictions.
President Donald Trump hosted a luncheon with AI leaders on September 29th, which ended with the executives signing a “morally binding” document to self-regulate product safety with the help of external evaluators.
White House documents indicate that further restrictions at the federal level are unlikely with the November midterm elections just weeks away. The backlash against AI and data center construction is at a fever pitch, making it a key issue that could help determine which party controls Congress in the final two years of President Trump’s term.
Dell also noted the growing opposition to data centers, saying more discussion about data centers is “a good thing.”
“We’re talking to our customers about this issue and hearing what they’re doing to address it. There are certainly things that can be done to make the system more efficient and reduce energy consumption,” Dell said. “So we’re all working together to address this issue. We don’t think this will be a major hurdle heading into 2027.”
