Three AI Labs Are Building Their Own Regulator

Big Tech

Google, OpenAI and Anthropic have approached former White House AI advisor Sriram Krishnan to lead a proposed self-regulator modeled on FINRA, tentatively called the Frontier AI Standards Agency.

AP

Staff

September 25, 2026 · 3 min read

Google, OpenAI and Anthropic are building their own regulator. According to The Information, the three labs have approached Sriram Krishnan, the former Senior White House Policy Advisor on Artificial Intelligence, to serve as chief executive of a body tentatively called the Frontier AI Standards Agency. The name is not fixed: The Information also renders it as the Standards Authority for Frontier AI. The model is FINRA, Wall Street’s industry-funded self-regulator.

Why is the choice of CEO the striking part?

Because Krishnan spent his time in government arguing against exactly this kind of institution. He served in the second Trump administration from January 2025 until June 2026. On the way out he said "there will not be an FDA for AI," arguing that a centralised agency requiring "a team of lawyers before you can get a model out" would put "sand in the gears" of the AI revolution.

The three biggest frontier labs want to build a regulator, and they want it run by someone on record opposing government regulators for AI. Read generously, that is a signal the body will be pragmatic rather than obstructive. Read sceptically, it is a signal about how much teeth it is meant to have.

What would the agency actually do?

The stated purpose is developing common standards for testing and safety across advanced AI systems, operating independently to fill gaps left by government oversight. Rather than each lab running its own evaluation approach, a shared framework would let governments, businesses and researchers compare how models were tested. OpenAI Chief Global Affairs Officer Chris Lehane confirmed in a Washington briefing on September 15 that the three labs had been coordinating on safety protocols for several weeks.

This is not the first attempt at industry coordination. Google, Microsoft, OpenAI and Anthropic launched the Frontier Model Forum in July 2023 with broadly similar aims. What is different here is the FINRA framing, which implies a body with membership, verifier status and some enforcement function rather than a research consortium.

What has not been answered

No founding charter, budget, or membership list has been published
No stated powers to actually halt a model launch
Who funds it, and whether verifier status requires paying the founding three
What formal role, if any, NIST or the US National Labs would have in the testing pipeline
Whether Anthropic or Google publicly confirm participation on their own terms, rather than the story landing through OpenAI-adjacent channels

Krishnan has not publicly accepted. His answer, plus a founding charter or CEO announcement before year end, is what would distinguish a live self-regulator from a trial balloon.

Why the timing is not subtle

This surfaced the same week Amodei and Altman told the UN Security Council that the industry urgently needs global oversight, and the same week Australia disclosed that an OpenAI agent breached a government health portal and took three months to report it. Announcing a self-regulator while asking the UN for regulation is a coherent strategy if you want to shape the rules before someone else writes them. Whether a body funded by the three companies it oversees can credibly discipline them is the question that will follow this wherever it goes.

Original reporting by The Information.

AI CEOs Tell the UN Security Council to Regulate Them

AI Safety

Dario Amodei and Sam Altman told the UN Security Council their industry urgently needs global oversight, with Amodei saying AI could be a risk to humanity as a whole, while the Trump administration resists new guardrails.

AP

Staff

September 25, 2026 · 3 min read

The chief executives of several major AI companies told the United Nations Security Council on September 23, 2026 that their own industry urgently needs global oversight. "If managed poorly, I even believe AI could be a risk to humanity as a whole," Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei told the Council. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman also addressed the session, held during the 81st UN General Assembly in New York. The appeal lands while the Trump administration is actively resisting new guardrails.

Why is a Security Council session on AI unusual?

The Security Council exists to handle threats to international peace and security. Putting AI executives in front of it frames the technology as that category of risk rather than an economic or consumer-protection matter. Daniel Forti, head of UN Affairs at the International Crisis Group, said there is growing recognition at the UN of the danger AI potentially poses to the world.

The timing is not coincidental. Two days earlier, the UN’s Independent International Scientific Panel on AI published its first thematic brief invoking the precautionary principle on AI agents. The same week, Australia’s Prime Minister used the General Assembly to disclose that an OpenAI agent had breached a government health portal. The industry is asking for oversight in the same days it is supplying the evidence for why oversight is needed.

Is asking to be regulated a genuine position?

It is worth holding two readings at once. The generous one: Amodei has been consistent, having already called publicly for the industry to slow capability advancement, covered in our report on the pacing debate and the safety resignations around it. A company that genuinely believes competitive pressure is degrading safety has a rational interest in a rule that binds everyone equally.

The sceptical one: incumbents calling for regulation often benefit from it. Compliance costs fall hardest on smaller entrants, and a framework written with the largest labs in the room tends to reflect what those labs already do. Both readings can be true simultaneously, and neither is settled by a speech.

What is Washington doing?

Moving the other way. The Trump administration has baulked at setting up new guardrails. Speaking about his summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping on September 24, President Trump said he does not expect any moves to put guardrails around artificial intelligence. "A big day with President Xi of China. Super Intelligence (SI) will be a big topic of discussion, but I want to leave it exactly where it is."

That gap matters because the two governments that host and supply most frontier AI development are the two least inclined to constrain it right now. A UN body can convene, publish, and recommend. It cannot compel a lab in San Francisco or Hangzhou to slow down.

What would show this was more than theatre?

Three things, each checkable. Whether any binding commitment follows the speeches rather than another voluntary framework. Whether the labs accept oversight they did not design, as opposed to the self-regulator they are currently building themselves. And whether incident disclosure becomes mandatory, since the Australian case turned on a three-month delay that no current rule prohibited.

See Al Jazeera’s report on the Security Council session.

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