Palantir Technologies CEO Alex Karp Thursday asked a key question in the artificial-intelligence risk debate: If AI leaders are so adamant that development of the technology should slow down, why don't they simply stop?
"It's a societal issue," Karp told CNBC's Squawk on the Street Thursday. "You have to find a way to set reasonable guidelines that are enforced."
"The first line of defense is you're liable for your own actions. So it's a weird twist they're asking for societal regulations to get out of the first line of defense which is if you build a technology that can destroy 10% of the world, that has civil and criminal liability attached to it," Karp added.
The Palantir CEO alluded to AI lab companies' calls for regulation as a way of bypassing responsibility for the risk associated with their product.
"This is reported as regulation, nonregulation, movement. That's not actually what this movement is. The view, I believe they have, is these businesses have to be nationalized because if you don't nationalize them every single one of my clients is going to sue," Karp said.
"What is the liability risk for destroying 10% of the world?" the CEO added.
Palantir stock rose 0.6% to $175.35 on Thursday and has gained about 5% so far this week.
Karp's comments come as this week has proved to be pivotal in how AI companies are publicly discussing the risks associated with AI.
On one side there's SpaceX's Elon Musk, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei who have called for a slowdown in the pace at which AI is developing. On the other side, President Donald Trump, Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang have pushed back against the calls to curb development.
Somewhere in the middle is Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella who has stressed that humans must maintain control over AI. Microsoft also released this week a new code of conduct for how it trains and operates its AI models. The company repeatedly noted its AI goal is for the human race to thrive.
At this point it looks like the debate over the existential threat that AI could pose may only get louder. That will surely have big ramifications for the stock market if Monday was any indication.