I was going to start this piece about AI companies demanding regulation with a Warren G joke, but I think most of you may be too young to get it. That song came out 32 years ago. I’m old.

The more stories I see about gen-AI companies bending over like rent boys at a billionaire’s birthday party and begging to be regulated by governments, the more I’m convinced it is all just another ruse, another marketing scam, another cock-tease to keep investors hard and sending money their way.

As we hear more “whistleblowers” do media exclusives where they wail on about AI (gen-AI, let’s be clear that we’re talking about LLMs here) having a better than 10% chance of killing us all within the next decade, I find myself giggling nervously.

I’m not giggling at the prospect of potential death at the whim of gen-AI overlords, but at the second-hand embarrassment I feel at these blatant marketing attempts, and the grift of people like Anthropic whistleblower Jacob Coxon.

Coxon, who was only at Anthropic for a few months, has already parlayed his “whistleblowing” into a Wall Street Journal exclusive, then CBS, and over 304K followers on his X account with his very first tweet. I assume there will be a Substack coming, and if not a company of his own, then a lucrative career as a “consultant”.

Emily Forlini at Fortune sums the situation up nicely:

Hear me out: He claims the AI could kill us someday, but doesn’t point to any projects in the pipeline that could be shut down to avoid this. He says AI companies are moving too fast, but neglects to share screenshots, emails, or specific examples of when this behavior went sideways—when it became clear to leaders at AI companies that the technology was slipping beyond their control, for instance, and how the decision-makers disregarded the warning signs. He doesn’t suggest any new legislation, name problematic leaders that should step down, or post an in-depth look at how Anthropic researches new models and propose a new approach.

And Ian Krietzberg from Puck News had a similar take:

I will say that I find it extremely interesting 1, the way Jacob Coxon’s resignation/warning seemed to just take off, and 2, the fact that it’s just that.

This is not a Frances Haugen situation. He’s not blowing the whistle on either OpenAi or Anthropic. He’s not revealing non-public information about their practices that he finds so concerning.

The whole thing is broad ideas-based, not specific company wrongdoing.

There’s never anything solid. It’s all wishy-washy vagueries, without any statement of what exactly is wrong, how we should fix it, who should be held responsible (because it’s clearly not the companies), or why we should even care. I mean, global extinction could solve a lot of problems for a lot of people, mate.

No matter how you feel about what he did, this guy is no Edward Snowden. His “whistleblowing” isn’t even up to the level of Edward Snowden from Temu.

But let’s talk regulation. Why would they want it? Well, the simple answer is that they don’t.

They know that the U.S. Congress and regulatory bodies are toothless right now. They know that Trump absolutely does not want them regulated, even going as far as to proclaim that calls for regulation would kill the golden goose.

“We already have tremendous CRIMINAL and REGULATORY power over these companies!” he wrote. “There is a SICK conspiracy going on against AI and Data Centers, and the only one that is happy about it is China.”

“WHOEVER WINS AI, WINS! We are leading China, and all others, and will continue to do so. Conspiracy Theorists, Treasonists, Traitors, and Leakers, BEWARE!”

Yet they are being regulated, at least in the European Union, and gen-AI companies like OpenAI and Anthropic simply cannot afford to exit that market if they are to have any chance of surviving.

They may be based in the United States, but the EU AI market was $66.4 Billion USD in 2024 and is set to hit $370.3 Billion by 2030. That cannot be ignored. More accurately, if these companies want to have any chance of surviving and meeting their financial commitments, they NEED every penny the EU AI market has to offer. This is non-negotiable.

The EU AI Act has been in place since August 2024 and entered into force in August of this year.

As of right now, AI companies that wish to operate in the EU market, regardless of where they are headquartered, must comply with the relevant obligations.

This regulation includes the obvious things like chatbots and AI agents must clearly inform users during interactions that they are speaking with AI rather than a real person. AI-generated or AI-modified images, audio, video, and text content must carry clear visual indicators and machine-readable digital markers. Basically, anything AI-generated must be labelled, and obviously so, but also

General-purpose AI model providers must disclose how models are developed, summarize the copyrighted content used in training, and provide downstream developers with sufficient information about model capabilities, limitations, and intended scope of use. Frontier model developers must also proactively identify and mitigate systemic risks, including chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear incidents, cyberattacks, and fundamental rights violations.

OpenAI, Anthropic, and even Elon Musk’s Grok simply do not want this kind of scrutiny. They don’t want to face the fines (up to 3% of annual turnover) or risk potentially losing access to the EU market.

The prospect of losing access to the EU market would have been an unthinkable proposition just a few years ago, but the EU’s now relentless march towards digital sovereignty means that foreign companies have to shape up or face being shipped out.

So the play, at least to me, is simple and happens on two fronts. One, they continue their fear mongering marketing tactics, ratcheting it up a notch two, which always makes the investors hard and gets them to spread open their… wallets.

Two, they call for regulation because they are “sooooo dangerous”, knowing full well that it will get them what they want. More media attention. More headlines. More investors who fall for grift.

And they get the biggest grifter of them all to do their bidding.

They get Trump, who is calling gen-AI and data centers the ‘golden goose’, and labels anyone, even the CEOs of the gen-AI companies, as “sick” and “traitors” if they talk about regulation.

They hope that the most easily manipulated person in history will set the weight of the US government to work trying to get the EU to relax or back off on its regulations.

In June 2024, the EU adopted the world’s first rules on AI. The Artificial Intelligence Act will be fully applicable 24 months after entry into force, but some parts will be applicable sooner:

• The ban of AI systems posing unacceptable risks started to apply on 2 February 2025
• Codes of practice will apply nine months after entry into force
• Rules on general-purpose AI systems that need to comply with transparency requirements will apply 12 months after the entry into force

High-risk systems will have more time to comply with the requirements as the obligations concerning them will become applicable 36 months after the entry into force.

You see, the clock is ticking.

If gen-AI was truly as dangerous as they make it out to be, then the only responsible and ethical response would be to stop before government regulation needs to step in. Simply stop, and then do whatever is necessary to stop others from going down the same path.

All these calls of regulation from Amodei, Altman, and even Musk agreeing that a slowdown might be prudent, sound like a group of brats mewling, “I’ve been a bad girl. Choke me, Daddy. Harder. Now buy me that Chanel Diamond Forever handbag”.