Joseph Gordon-Levitt
Role at the time: Actor and founder of HitRecord, giving a toast as a TIME100 AI honouree
Statement summary
Giving a toast at the TIME100 AI Impact Dinner, Gordon-Levitt compared AI to cars and housing, industries that must follow safety law or be shut down, and said today's AI companies are operating in a way that the law should already be stopping. He argued their own leaders and employees had admitted the products were dangerous and could not be controlled.
“Why are cars safe to drive? Why are houses safe to live in? It’s because car companies and construction companies ... they have to follow laws. And if they don’t, then the law can come and shut those companies down … “So let’s just be clear here: today’s AI companies are operating in such a way that the law should be shutting them down.”
TIME’s report of the toasts given at its own third annual TIME100 AI Impact Dinner, held at San Francisco’s Asian Art Museum on the evening of Monday, September 14, 2026. Gordon-Levitt was named to the 2026 TIME100 AI list and spoke as one of three honourees giving toasts. Two widely syndicated renderings of these remarks add words the article does not print, so the quotation follows this source rather than the aggregators.
Why we used this label
Gordon-Levitt says current companies should be shut down under the law and criticizes politicians for failing to act. That rejects the present handling of AI safety.