President Trump brushed
aside the concerns of artificial intelligence doomsayers Sunday
— saying their predictions “won’t happen” as he downplayed the need for more
regulation.
Beating China was the most important goal in the AI race,
he said at his golf course in Doonbeg, Ireland.
“We’re leading China in AI. We’re the most sophisticated
country in the world, and frankly, I want to keep it that way because whoever
wins AI wins,” Trump told reporters.
Trump contended that the apocalyptic predictions of what
AI can do are overblown and underscored that his priority is to ensure the US
remains the leader in cutting-edge technology.
“And we can put
guardrails; we can do this and that,” he added.
“But I think you have a lot of negative voices that are
bringing it up that shouldn’t be bringing it up, and they’re bringing up things
that won’t happen.”
The president’s comments come after Anthropic safety
researchers Joe Benton and Jacob Coxon quit
in protest of the company’s work, issuing a dramatic warning
about where the scramble to advance AI was heading.
Coxon went
viral with his warning last Tuesday, garnering some 170 million
views on X as he blasted both Anthropic and OpenAI for acting
irresponsibly and vented that they are “racing straight to
self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives.”
Amid the firestorm, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, who
has tried to build a reputation of being the most cautious AI boss, then
called for a slowdown in development of the emerging tech. The slowdown was
backed by xAI boss Elon Musk and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.
Some Republicans have pushed for the government to take a
more active role in overseeing AI development and for tech honchos to take more
responsibility.
For example, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) on Sunday
called for Congress, the White House and top AI executives to huddle and draft
better guardrails, while echoing Trump’s insistence that China can’t lead the
development of the nascent technology.
“We have to do this right, safely and wisely,” Johnson
told CNN’s “State of the Union,” adding that Congress and the White House need
to come together as soon as possible to “figure out what the right balance
is.”
“We cannot put a
moratorium on this because China will overlap us, and that’s
the challenge — national security balanced with the immediate
security of making sure the models are safe,” he added.
David Sacks, Trump’s former AI czar and current
co-president of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and
Technology, criticzed Amodei and Altman, accusing them of doing a
publicity stunt.
“[S]top pretending you need anyone else’s permission.
Stop pretending antitrust law has to be suspended so you can form a cartel.
Stop pretending you need a regulatory approval process that supersedes product
liability,” Sacks chided on X in response.
“Most of all, stop pretending the motivation to slow down
is purely altruistic,” he added. “China is very unlikely to join a global
agreement, as you know, and that has to be taken into account as well. So
go ahead and pace the frontier. You are the ones setting it.”
Amodei cited the hack attack of this summer of AI company
Hugging Face, in which OpenAI agents broke free of their constraints and
carried out coordinated, autonomous cyberattacks in order to get the answers to
a test.
He noted that
“[s]imilar, though less severe, incidents” have taken place at other
firms.
“Given the accelerating rate of AI capability
development, it’s my worry that in 6–12 months such a swarm could be capable of
taking over the entire internet with a persistent botnet … and that the scale
of damage would continue to increase from there if AI becomes more powerful
without the necessary guardrails,” he wrote
in a piece on Saturday.
Democrats have also sounded the alarms about AI, with
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who caucuses with Dems, demanding the US
enact a moratorium on data centers and calling on Trump to cut an AI truce with
China.
“With the future of humanity at stake, Trump must
negotiate a comprehensive treaty with President Xi of China to establish a
pause on advanced AI development and a ban on super intelligence,” Sanders posted
on X Sunday.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) declared
that during the Democrats’ caucus meeting Tuesday, a “high priority will be
action on artificial intelligence.
“We certainly need to
begin to act urgently to address the challenges that exist,” Jeffries told ABC
News’ “This Week” on Sunday. “What we did as Democrats was to begin last
December a Commission on Artificial Intelligence and the Innovation Economy so
we could evaluate the steps that needed to be done and then present an
aggressive framework.”
Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.), who once sparked
presidential buzz, called for the establishment of a select committee in
Congress to tackle AI.
“AI is unlike any technology we’ve seen before,” he said
on “State of the Union. “Once it becomes fully dangerous, it won’t care whether
you’re Chinese or American. We can’t afford to wait three years to act; we have
to move now to regulate it.”
Earlier this year, the
Trump administration intervened after Anthropic’s frontier Mythos
model sparked a panic about its potential to exploit cybersecurity
vulnerabilities across the board. The Trump administration temporarily
banned access to Mythos in response to those fears.
Trump has called AI “bigger than the internet” and
highlighted its revolutionary potential, particularly in medicine.
Despite a blizzard of polling indicating public
skepticism towards AI and the data centers that power them, Trump has continued
to defend both, constantly stressing the need to ensure the US stays ahead of
China.
