DeepMind CEO calls for an independent standards body to regulate frontier AI

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Image Credits:Jose Sarmento Matos/Bloomberg / Getty Images

10:45 AM PDT · July 14, 2026

In an X station connected Tuesday morning, Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis called for the instauration of a caller regulatory assemblage to oversee frontier exemplary releases. Titled “A Framework for Frontier AI and the Dawning of a New Age,” the station makes the lawsuit for a “standards body” modeled aft the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA), which could trial frontier models and make champion practices for their release.

“Initially, Frontier Labs would voluntarily stock models with the Standards Body for reappraisal up to 30 days earlier release,” the station reads. “Once the appraisal protocol is shown to beryllium effectual and robust, formalisation could rapidly follow, meaning that Frontier Models would beryllium required to walk it to beryllium deployed successful the US market. Labs would besides enactment with the Standards Body to code immoderate captious post-release vulnerabilities.”

The projected strategy would physique connected the advertisement hoc reviews performed by the US authorities connected Anthropic’s Mythos and OpenAI’s Sol. Those reviews drew significant criticism for deficiency of method expertise and opaque decision-making arsenic to erstwhile a exemplary could beryllium released. Under Hassabis’s projected regulator, those decisions could beryllium handed disconnected to a caller organization, backed by the US authorities but funded by the AI manufacture and operated independently.

The imaginable of AI regularisation remains arguable for some the tech manufacture and the Trump Administration. Most recently, White House AI advisor and a16z wide spouse Sriram Krishnan discounted the possibility of an AI regulator wrong the enforcement branch, saying “there volition not beryllium an FDA for AI.”

Establishing the standards assemblage arsenic a self-regulatory enactment similar FINRA could beryllium a mode to code those concerns. Hassabis envisions the regulator being staffed by open-source representatives and method experts from wrong the industry, on with the fiscal backing from AI labs that would beryllium indispensable to clasp them. They could adjacent outsource immoderate evaluations to the increasing excavation of AI information groups who would beryllium capable to specialize successful circumstantial risks.

“The spot of this attack is it would beryllium technically focused, portion astatine the aforesaid clip supporting innovation and incentivising liable behaviour,” Hassabis argues. “It is designed to support up with the field’s acceleration and accommodate to the biggest risks arsenic they are identified, and could beryllium ratcheted up if the seriousness of the concern demands.”

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Russell Brandom has been covering the tech manufacture since 2012, with a absorption connected level argumentation and emerging technologies. He antecedently worked astatine The Verge and Rest of World, and has written for Wired, The Awl and MIT’s Technology Review. He tin beryllium reached astatine russell.brandom@techcrunch.com oregon connected Signal astatine 412-401-5489.

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