During a CNBC interview, Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan said US regulators should not intervene in Chinese AI labs' use of distillation, and suggested American open-weight AI labs adopt similar techniques to build a stronger non-Chinese open-weight model ecosystem. He also criticized proprietary AI labs for using human knowledge without permission and described restrictions on API usage as overreach.
In a CNBC interview, Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan urged the public to focus on real-world AI safety risks rather than Hollywood-style doomsday scenarios. He recommended that policymakers prioritize cybersecurity, infrastructure security, and how autonomous AI agents operate, citing the OpenAI intrusion into Hugging Face as an example. He also expressed support for recent warnings from researchers at OpenAI and Anthropic, saying they are likely right.