Jamie Dimon is not known for being a fan of regulation, but this week he voiced support for a "light touch" form of federal oversight for the artificial intelligence industry, arguing that differing state laws complicate AI commerce.
"If it's going to be anything, it should be federal. It should be light touch," Dimon, the longtime CEO of JPMorgan Chase (JPM), said in a Wednesday interview. "The government will have its own opinion, as will every state. … I do think that becomes an issue because it's almost impossible to deal with commerce when you have different state laws for everything."
Some of the tech industry's biggest leaders in recent days have called for pacing the development of frontier AI models after Anthropic (ANTH.PVT) CEO Dario Amodei published a lengthy essay last Saturday that said labs need to take steps to prevent the technology from causing harm, including slower frontier model development and asking the government to regulate the broader industry.
Read more: JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon: 'It's not clear to me we've slayed inflation'
Tech executives have also begun to voice support for industry-led oversight.
On Monday, President Trump took to Truth Social to slam the leaders for calling for a slower pace. Without his backing, federal regulation appears unlikely.
"We haven't been telling the government what the policy should be, but if we felt strongly about something, we'd tell them," Dimon said.
He added, "A lot of people are afraid when the government gets involved, it can do a pretty good job mucking things up. That doesn't mean you shouldn't have it. And so we really don't know yet."
Dimon's comment comes as his bank and other rivals have been working with Anthropic ahead of the AI company's planned IPO. JPMorgan was part of a syndicate finalizing a pre-IPO credit facility for the company earlier this month, according to a Bloomberg report.
JPMorgan is already working with Anthropic on frontier model risks and talking with federal officials, Dimon said, as banks and the government work to establish new systems for coordinating cybersecurity vulnerabilities.
Although JPMorgan was the only lender named in the initial announcement of Anthropic's Mythos working group, which gave companies early access to the then-frontier model, the initiative has since expanded to include more than one hundred other organizations.
JPMorgan has been patching its own tech vulnerabilities, sharing its findings, and conducting broader investigations into the capabilities of these models, Dimon said. It's in ongoing discussions with the AI industry and the federal government.