Dario Amodei, the CEO of Anthropic, recently joined the chorus of Silicon Valley Cassandras calling on AI companies to deliberately slow the pace of product development. In a widely discussed letter, he predicted a nightmare scenario in which a swarm of AI agents takes over the internet and causes hundreds of billions of dollars in damage—something he thinks could happen within the next six to 12 months.

But we don’t have to wait a year to see the damage artificial intelligence can cause if ungoverned. Most near-term harm will come not from rogue agents but from ordinary systems, bought from ordinary vendors, making ordinary decisions about people. For example, in the banking industry, AI is already helping decide who gets a loan and at what price, whose claim is flagged, and whose account is closed. According to Deloitte, twice as many bank employees use AI weekly as did a year ago and the number of publicly reported AI incidents and hazards in the sector was eight times higher in 2025 than in 2022.

That might not feel like an existential problem, but it has real consequences for people’s finances and well-being—and the same problem exists across health care, transportation, and other critical sectors.

The labs may be able to pace what they build, but not what the rest of us deploy. Nor are regulators moving fast enough to protect your business, your customers, or your shareholders’ interests. Every business must decide for itself what it will and will not let a machine decide.

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