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DUBLIN: President Donald Trump on Sunday played down the need for his administration to check the development of artificial intelligence, saying he worried about ceding America\u2019s edge over China in a global competition and that winning would help address the risks from the advancing technology.<\/p>\n
While acknowledging the need for some regulation, Trump provided no specifics about potential rules and attributed warnings about the technology moving too quickly and with little oversight to \u201cnegative forces\u201d he did not identify, though industry pioneers have raised such concerns.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe can put guardrails, we can do this and that, but I think you have a lot of negative forces that are bringing it up that … shouldn\u2019t be bringing it up, and they\u2019re bringing up things that won\u2019t happen,\u201d Trump told reporters during a weekend trip to Ireland. \u201cBut whoever wins with AI wins.\u201d<\/p>\n
Asked later Sunday if he was trying to minimize the risks from AI, Trump said, \u201cI\u2019m not downplaying,\u201d adding that artificial intelligence is \u201cgoing to be more good than bad, but by a lot.\u201d Speaking with reporters during the flight back to Washington, he repeated his earlier comment regarding the stakes for \u201cwhoever wins AI.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Republican president spoke a day after Dario Amodei, CEO of the artificial intelligence company Anthropic, said the industry should put the brakes on its fast-moving development to give safety measures time to catch up. Other tech leaders, including Elon Musk and Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, publicly agreed with Amodei.<\/p>\n
Asked by a reporter if the industry should slow down or be regulated, Trump said after watching a golfer tee off in the Irish Open at his resort in Doonbeg that the United States is leading China in the development of AI and \u201cfrankly, I want to keep it that way because whoever wins AI wins.\u201d<\/p>\n
Chinese President Xi Jinping is due at the White House later in September to meet with Trump, and AI likely will be among the items they discuss.<\/p>\n
AI has become a major election-year issue in the US as some of the country\u2019s largest companies seed small towns with a national network of computing warehouses while Americans from both parties increasingly raise alarms about less farmland and water supplies and rising electricity bills. Trump has kept up his support for data centers even as both Republicans and Democrats run from them and many communities try to block them.<\/p>\n
Former President Barack Obama, a Democrat, said his party should make AI a campaign issue.<\/p>\n
\u201cI would talk about this, and I would say, \u2018Here\u2019s our plan for safety, here\u2019s our plan for making sure our kids are not corrupted by this.\u2019 … I would be thinking about the economic impacts in very concrete ways and understanding what does it mean if there\u2019s going to be job displacement. Where is that going to hit? How are we going to respond?\u201d he said at an event last week with the top Democrat in the US House, New York Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, according to a transcript released by his office.<\/p>\n
White House meetings and a call for action by members of Congress<\/strong><\/p>\n Kevin Hassett, director of the National Economic Council at the White House, said he expects meetings will be held this week involving administration officials who oversee cyber and science and technology policy to discuss the next steps. Trump also could meet with members of Congress, some of whom have also been sounding alarms about the fast pace of AI development.<\/p>\n \u201cI think the president wants to hear from them as well,\u201d Hassett said.<\/p>\n US House Speaker Mike Johnson acknowledged the need for \u201csome guardrails, some safety measures\u201d so AI \u201cdoesn\u2019t run away.\u201d But, like Trump, he also wants to ensure the US does not \u201close our edge in the global competition on this with China because that would be a national security threat.\u201d<\/p>\n Johnson, R-Louisiana, said industry leaders need to be summoned for \u201cone big meeting and work this out together in the same room.\u201d He said he has discussed the issue with Trump and believes a meeting held quickly should be the \u201cnext step.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cSo we\u2019re going to pull everybody together and make sure we do this in the right way,\u201d Johnson said, adding that it is a \u201ctop priority for me and for the Congress.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cBut we don\u2019t need everybody to panic right now,\u201d Johnson said.<\/p>\n Jeffries criticized Republican leaders for allowing members to go back to their districts for the final part of September.<\/p>\n \u201cWe should take decisive action now so that we can slow down, as the CEOs have recently acknowledged, \u2026 the pace of development in order to protect the American people and ensure that AI is proceeding safely,\u201d Jeffries said. Action on AI will be a \u201chigh priority\u201d when House Democrats meet Tuesday as a group.<\/p>\n Neither Johnson nor Jeffries provided concrete steps about what Congress might do. Lawmakers agree that more guardrails are needed, but even narrow attempts at imposing rules have fallen apart over the years, evidence of the congressional reluctance to regulate the technology industry.<\/p>\n Industry insider urges cooperation between Washington and Beijing<\/strong><\/p>\n Jacob Coxon, a former Anthropic employee who resigned over AI concerns and has gone public with his fears, argued for international rules along with industry self-regulation.<\/p>\n Coxon said he has grown concerned that AI models would soon gain super capabilities that could exceed human control.<\/p>\n \u201cYou\u2019re building a human-level or superhuman-level mind, without understanding what it wants, or thinks, or the way it thinks,\u201d Coxon said.<\/p>\n At a time of a fierce global competition for AI dominance, Coxon also urged cooperation between the US and China, the two countries who are leading the race, to slow down and address safety.<\/p>\n \u201cI do hope that the people in China who are looking at the same problems as we are, so they\u2019re trying to build the same technology, will come to the same conclusion that it has to be done in a measured manner, and it should be easy to cooperate on some sort of mutual \u2014 of mutual slowing,\u201d Coxon said.<\/p>\n Otherwise, he said, \u201cwe risk running the same race with China, which could be equally dangerous.\u201d<\/p>\n White House adviser challenges AI leaders over regulation<\/p>\n Tech founder and investor David Sacks responded to the AI leaders\u2019 calls for regulation with a social media post challenging them. Sacks, co-chairman of a White House advisory council on science and technology, said Amodei and other leaders are the ones setting the pace for development.<\/p>\n Sacks said they have the power to slow development on their own.<\/p>\n \u201cThe easiest way not to build superintelligence is for you to agree not to build it,\u201d Sacks wrote.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n