Elon Musk wants rival AI labs, including Chinese firms, to safety test each other's models

[Rachel93]

Speaking at the All-In Summit in Los Angeles, Elon Musk called on the world's leading AI companies to test each other's models before public release, proposing what he described as a test harness that would give direct rivals access to actually evaluate a lab's safety practices ahead of any new launch. Musk specifically suggested xAI, OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Meta, and three or four of the leading Chinese AI companies should all participate in the same arrangement, framing the whole idea plainly as instead of grading your own homework, you would at least have competitors grading your homework and raising the alarm if they see concerns.

Musk was upfront that the proposal is not a complete solution on its own, but argued that the odds that you will find issues are dramatically greater once genuine outside competitors, rather than a lab's own internal team, are the ones actually doing the testing. He also acknowledged directly that no rival lab has actually agreed to the plan yet, though he said he believed China specifically would be receptive to participating, a notable claim given how openly dismissive Beijing's own Foreign Ministry has otherwise been this week toward the broader Western push for a coordinated AI slowdown, calling it fear mongering in a separate statement.

The proposal lands directly in the middle of the same weekend of dueling AI safety statements that also saw Anthropic's Dario Amodei call for pacing frontier development, receiving public support from both Musk and OpenAI's Sam Altman in what genuinely counted as a rare moment of open agreement among executives who spend most of their time as direct, sometimes openly hostile competitors. Amodei separately suggested labs could accept third party technology assessments from what he called embedded evaluators to verify safety practices, a proposal that sits somewhat differently from Musk's specific vision of direct rival to rival peer testing rather than an independent outside evaluator sitting in the middle of the whole process.

The political backdrop makes any of this genuinely difficult to actually implement in practice. President Trump rejected calls for AI regulation the same day, posting that fears over AI represent a hoax and a scam, while National Economic Council director Kevin Hassett said the private sector is the right place to address AI concerns, with government law enforcement stepping in only when necessary rather than through any kind of new formal regulatory framework. Worth noting too that Musk's own xAI has separately taken legal action challenging California's AI Training Data Transparency Act and contested a Minnesota law banning deepfake nude generation apps, which sits in some real tension with his own public call here for greater cross company safety cooperation and oversight

Musk urges top AI labs, Chinese companies to test each other's models amid calls for slowdownwww.cnbc.com