When the tech boys start asking for new regulations, you know something's up John Naughton

Watching the opening day of the US Senate hearings on AI brought to mind Marx's quip about history repeating itself, "the first time as tragedy, the second as farce". Some time ago we had the farce of the boss of Meta (neé Facebook) explaining to a senator that his company made money from advertising. This week we had the tragedy of seeing senators quizzing Sam Altman, the new acceptable face of the tech industry. Well, as one of my kids, looking up from revising O-level classics, once explained to me: "It's when you can see the disaster coming but you can't do anything to stop it." The trigger moment was when Altman declared: "We think that regulatory interventions by government will be critical to mitigate the risks of increasingly powerful models."