Liz’s view
Chuck Prince, CEO of Citigroup from 2003 to 2007, is remembered for one quote that captured the greed and spinelessness of Wall Street bosses chasing riches while steering the global economy toward a cliff: “As long as the music is playing, you’ve got to get up and dance. We’re still dancing.” (Prince later clarified that his comments were about private-equity buyouts, not subprime mortgages, but they became indelibly attached to the production of toxic housing bonds.)
Today’s music is AI, not subprime mortgages, and it’s still playing. But this crop of Chuck Princes seems willing to consider stepping off the dance floor. I’m still not sure what Dario Amodei’s idea to “pace the frontier” actually means in practice — slower Wi-Fi at the Anthropic office? Tying the developers’ shoelaces together? — but it’s clearly a warning issued at the cost of some short-term riches, which is more than Prince ever managed.
Prince knew how dangerous Wall Street’s subprime addiction was but couldn’t quit. Some peers knew too, and quietly did: JPMorgan began exiting subprime lending in late 2006, and Goldman Sachs’ strong-arm collateral demands ensured it was not stuck holding what Jeremy Irons’ Dick Fuld-esque character in the film Margin Call would later call “the biggest bag of odorous excrement ever assembled in the history of capitalism.”
Both firms paced their own frontiers. Neither did anything to stop the overall machine. The loudest alarms back then came from outsiders — misfit investors like Michael Burry and academics like Raghuram Rajan — who got plenty of grief for their candor.
The calls this time are coming from inside the house.
Notable
- Read Amodei’s full essay, calling on AI labs to “pace the frontier.”