Regulating AI may be a prevalent topic at the highest levels of government and tech, but the moment to get it right may have already passed.

“Regulation is going to have to be self-regulation,” said Sir Martin Sorrell, founder and executive chairman of S4 Capital, this week at the Fortune Global Forum in Riyadh. “The cat is out of the bag. We’ve missed the Oppenheimer moment. Many people compare it to the control of nuclear weapons.”

Sorrell—famed as the founder of advertising giant WPP—went on to explain that tech companies and individual figures like Elon Musk are simply too large, rich, and influential for governments to meaningfully bring down a regulatory hammer.

“Apple’s at $4 trillion, and Musk’s compensation in his latest plan is geared to a $10 trillion valuation,” Sorrell told

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