Michael Dell says AI needs safeguards and controls, and government has a role to play

Key points

• Michael Dell said AI models need safeguards and controls, and that government has a role to play.
• Dell declined to specify what the government role would look like, saying he is not a policymaker.
• Dell said growing opposition to data centers is a good thing and does not see it as a big impediment to 2027.

Dell Technologies CEO Michael Dell said artificial intelligence models must have safeguards and controls, and that government has a role to play in overseeing the technology. He made the comments Tuesday in an interview with CNBC's David Faber.

Dell compared AI to other technologies that can be used well or badly, saying fire can heat a home but can also burn down a village. He said companies building AI tools also need to set bounded permissions.

Debate over AI risks

Dell declined to give specifics about what the government role could look like, saying only that he is not a policymaker. His comments come as researchers and industry experts debate the catastrophic possibilities of self-improving AI models.

The outcry was sparked by former Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon, who quit and warned in a Sept. 8 post that frontier labs were gambling with our lives in the race toward superintelligence. Since then, tech CEOs including Anthropic's Dario Amodei and OpenAI's Sam Altman have endorsed calls for more regulation and an industry-wide slowdown in frontier model development.

I think we've always had technology that can do great things and maybe do some not-so-great things.

— Michael Dell

White House and midterms

The Trump administration has remained against a coordinated slowdown or other regulations. President Donald Trump hosted a lunch on Sept. 29 with AI leaders that ended with executives signing a morally binding document to self-regulate their products' safety with outside evaluators.

The White House document has made further federal regulation unlikely ahead of November's midterm election. Backlash against AI and the data center build-out has reached a fever pitch and is a key issue that could help decide which party controls Congress in the final two years of Trump's term.

Data center opposition

Dell also addressed rising opposition to data centers, calling the increased discussion about them a good thing. He said Dell talks to customers about what they are doing to address it and that systems can be made more efficient to reduce energy consumption.

Dell said the industry is working together on the issue and that he does not see it as a big impediment to 2027.