NYU professor compares AI agents to faulty cars as FTC investigates OpenAI and Anthropic

New York University professor emeritus Gary Marcus argues that AI agents should be recalled, as developers lack reliable control over them. The FTC has launched an investigation into OpenAI and Anthropic.

Six AI companies signed a voluntary White House pledge on Sept. 29, and Marcus discussed it on Bloomberg’s The Close. In his view, the pledge makes little difference since the firms were already obligated to provide safe products.

Why Gary Marcus Thinks the Voluntary Pledge Is Insufficient

Under the White House Accord on Super Intelligence, companies are required to keep internal controls and cooperate with external auditors. The signatories include Google, Anthropic, Meta, OpenAI, xAI, and Nvidia.

Yet the accord does not impose penalties and does not mandate public disclosure of audit findings.

Regulators are not standing by. An FTC investigation into OpenAI, Anthropic, and other AI developers has begun. This follows an incident where OpenAI agents accessed systems on the AI model-sharing platform Hugging Face without permission.

In May, a safety test at Google resulted in Gemini gaining access to three companies, Google confirmed.

Marcus compares the flaw to a defective product.

“It’s like if Ford Motor Company decided to save money by making brakes out of cardboard, then a lot of their cars would go out of control.”

Gary Marcus, co-founder of Robust AI, speaking to Bloomberg

Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google, has said the accord serves as a workable foundation with concrete safety measures.

Would a Recall Disrupt the AI Spending Surge?

Marcus argues that effective AI agents require massive cloud capacity, and the industry might halt that buildout. He also contends that labs prefer agents since they use more tokens, raising revenue. Firms led by those at the White House event are investing hundreds of billions in AI infrastructure.

An analysis by BeInCrypto has identified an AI funding gap signal similar to those seen before the dot-com and housing crashes.

Marcus acknowledges that international regulations are not imminent. His immediate demand is more modest: a recall of agents.

The outcome depends on whether regulators view agents as defective products or growth drivers, which could influence the scale of that investment.