David Sacks
Role at the time: White House artificial intelligence and cryptocurrency czar, as described by ABC News
Statement summary
David Sacks, described by ABC News as President Trump's top adviser on the issue, said existing law already holds AI companies responsible, and that if a company puts out a harmful product it is liable for it. Reporting of his remarks at a Politico event the previous day records him agreeing with former FTC chair Lina Khan that major AI companies are already subject to product liability, adding that new regulation is not needed, and describing public concern about AI as driven by a "fear-mongering playbook." His account of the sufficiency of existing law is a policy position, not a legal determination by this case.
“This is something I've been saying for a while is that if an AI company puts out a product that's harmful, they are liable for that.”
ABC News segment posted to the network's X account at 11:39 AM ET on September 17, 2026. Besides Hinton it carries several other figures relevant to this case and not yet recorded from it: Sen. John Kennedy attempting to fast-track a bill requiring AI companies to be able to deploy a kill switch, saying there is "even a 1% chance" a model could shed its nature as a tool and become an independent species; Sen. Rand Paul blocking that proposal on the grounds that Congress does not understand the technology well enough to regulate it; and an unnamed senior Trump adviser saying existing law already makes AI companies liable for harmful products. The segment also reports that Anthropic's chief executive wants coordinated industry safety standards and has said this may require an antitrust waiver, which senators of both parties have resisted. One line in the segment — "This is bat crazy insane science fiction stuff" — is spoken over Hinton's probability estimate and is not Hinton's; the speaker is not identified in the clip, so it is not attributed here.
Why we used this label
Sacks rejects it, arguing existing liability law already covers the harm and that new rules are unnecessary. That is the same argument Trump makes in this case (556), also classified condemns, and places him with Huang (727) and Zuckerberg (939). The closest competing label is “Mixed or conditional”, since pointing to existing enforcement is how Lina Khan (621) is classified here; it loses because Khan invokes existing authority as a reason to act against companies while Sacks invokes it as a reason not to legislate further.