Moderna Co-Founder Noubar Afeyan Calls for Regulation of AI Agents

Noubar Afeyan, co-founder and chairman of Moderna, called for careful regulation of artificial-intelligence agents as they are commercialized and deployed outside companies’ internal environments.

Afeyan made the remarks Oct. 13 during a panel on AI and scientific discovery at the Bloomberg New Economy Forum in New Delhi. He said autonomous agents warrant different oversight from large language models because they can pursue tasks with less direct human instruction.

“To me, LLMs are capability. Agents are intentionality,” Afeyan said.

His proposal focused on agents that move beyond an organization’s internal environment once they are commercialized or deployed externally. It did not call for halting AI research or restricting foundational language models.

Afeyan compared the issue with pharmaceutical safety and referred to the thalidomide disaster as an example of harm linked to inadequate testing. The drug was associated with birth defects after it reached patients without sufficient safety safeguards.

He also acknowledged that AI agents could assist with drug development and scientific research. At the same time, he warned that such systems could generate harmful compounds or produce unreliable results.

“I believe what we should do is to think carefully about regulating agents that are being commercialized and that are being transmitted outside the boundaries of what somebody may want to do in house,” Afeyan said.

The discussion did not identify a specific regulator, proposed rule, compliance standard or implementation timeline for commercial AI agents.