SAN FRANCISCO — Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang on Tuesday told a packed Dreamforce stage that the AI industry does not need new laws, a clear, pragmatic stance that echoes arguments recently voiced by the president.
“We don’t need any new laws. We don’t need new regulations,” Huang, who runs one of the most successful companies in technology, said during an interview with Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff.
His remarks at one of San Francisco’s largest tech gatherings underlined a split among industry figures over AI safety, after Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei set off a political firestorm over the weekend with calls to slow the pace of AI development. Huang’s comments came just minutes after Amodei took the same stage with Benioff, who praised Anthropic’s work integrating AI into Salesforce.
Huang has also struck up a notably cordial rapport with the president during the administration’s second term: the day before, Huang took a call from the president while onstage at a separate Los Angeles event, and they agreed that recent existential warnings about AI had been overstated, with the president calling some of the alarmist language a “hoax.” That tone fits with a sensible skepticism toward panic-driven proposals that would hamstring innovation.
The Nvidia CEO echoed arguments made by other prominent Republicans, including Trump AI adviser David Sacks and House Speaker Mike Johnson, who say safety oversight should primarily remain the responsibility of the companies that build these systems.
“If you build a product or a service and you’re not confident in its functionality, capability or safety, then don’t release it,” Huang said.
He also dismissed fears that AI will simply automate away jobs as “completely nonsense,” a reminder that sensational headlines often outpace the practical realities of technology adoption.
Amodei and some other executives have called for stronger guardrails and said they will let outside safety reviewers inspect their systems. That’s a legitimate choice for some companies, but it shouldn’t become a one-size-fits-all regulatory straitjacket.
On Tuesday, OpenAI backed a bipartisan House plan for third-party safety assessments, while Elon Musk called for leading labs and Chinese companies to peer-review each other’s models. The debate is unfolding publicly, and industry-led solutions deserve space to develop.
Ahead of last year’s Dreamforce, Benioff drew controversy in traditionally liberal San Francisco when he expressed support for the president and even floated the idea of sending the National Guard to the city; he later apologized. On Tuesday, he mostly acted as a neutral interviewer, asking Amodei to describe the “state of the AI industry and pacing.”
Amodei’s view was the opposite of Huang’s accelerationist perspective.
“Let’s organize the rest of the industry and say, ‘What can we do to set standards for everyone?’” Amodei said.
