Dell CEO Michael Dell Says AI Needs Safeguards and Government Role

Dell Technologies CEO Michael Dell stated in an interview with CNBC on October 13 that artificial intelligence models must have "safeguards and controls" and that there is "a role for government to play."

Dell compared AI to fire: "Fire can heat your home. It can also burn down your whole village. So we have to have safeguards and controls." He urged AI developers to set "bounded permissions" but declined to specify what the government's role should look like, noting he is "not a policymaker."

His comments come amid intensifying debates over the catastrophic risks of self-improving AI models. Former Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon recently warned that frontier labs are "gambling with our lives," prompting support for regulatory intervention from leaders at OpenAI and Anthropic. However, the Trump administration has remained opposed to coordinated slowdowns or statutory guardrails.