The Trump administration Monday beat back doomsday demands — and calls by former President Barack Obama — to hyper-regulate artificial intelligence, arguing the chilling warnings put forward by industry leaders and Democrats are a coordinated election-year ploy.
President Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance both questioned the timing and coordination of a series of warnings from AI leaders about the threat to humanity they say will come unless the government restrains advancement of the super-smart tech.
Mr. Trump pushed back hard against the sudden regulation frenzy, calling the AI pile-on “no different” than the false allegations that he colluded with Russia to win the 2016 election “and all the other HOAXES and SCAMS that America was forced to endure through the Destructionists’ and Deviants’ foul play and illegal conduct.”
Mr. Vance said the sudden move by AI tech companies “begging” for government regulation “feels a little bit to me like a bit of a Trojan horse.”
Democrats are scrambling to thrust AI regulation to the top of their agenda weeks before the midterm elections as polls show Americans are worried about it. A YouGov poll published Monday found half of respondents were concerned AI could cause “the end of the human race,” and 67% said AI technology is advancing too quickly.
Congressional Democrats are following the marching orders of Mr. Obama, who, according to The New York Times, told them at a private fundraiser that AI could become “dangerous” if not regulated.
Mr. Obama urged House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, New York Democrat, to make AI regulation central to the party’s agenda.
On Monday, Mr. Jeffries held a press conference and said Congress should not adjourn to campaign for the upcoming election “until something is done decisively to protect the safety and the well-being of the American people in the face of growing concerns being raised by experts within the artificial intelligence industry itself.”
Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer, New York Democrat, called for a closed-door briefing on alleged AI threats and demanded “serious guardrails” on AI development to protect the public.
Democrats’ rush to regulate comes a day after Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei called for “some kind of oversight, some kind of joint governance” to regulate AI advancement.
Mr. Amodei’s plea, made Sunday during an interview on CBS, followed an essay he published warning that within a year, unregulated AI could produce a swarm of bots capable of taking over the internet and causing billions of dollars in economic damages.
A couple of days earlier, Jacob Coxon quit his job as an AI researcher at Anthropic and warned on X that “the people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade.”
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said his company “welcomes a federal framework that sets up consistent safety requirements for frontier AI,” and that it would need help from the U.S. government “for international coordination.”
Skeptics, however, are questioning the sudden alarmism over AI that is coming from industry insiders who are now calling on the government to step in and regulate it.
David Sacks, who serves as co-chair of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science & Technology, called on the heads of Anthropic AI and OpenAI to regulate themselves, without government oversight, if they believe the pace of AI development is moving too fast.
“If the unreleased models are scary enough that you think you should slow down, I support your decision to be responsible,” Mr. Sacks said on X. “But stop pretending you need anyone else’s permission … stop pretending the motivation to slow down is purely altruistic.”
Mr. Sacks accused the two AI giants of manipulating public sentiment and lawmakers to obtain freedom from antitrust laws and to secure regulations that protect them from both competition and liability in the event of a massive cyberattack by AI gone rogue.
“So go ahead and pace the frontier; you are the ones setting it,” he said. “If you don’t, we’ll know this was just another bid for regulatory capture — or an election season psyop.”
Mr. Trump on Monday phoned into the All-In tech summit taking place in Los Angeles. He reached Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang as he sat before a crowd on stage at the Shrine Auditorium with Mr. Sacks and tech leaders.
Mr. Huang put the president on speakerphone, and Mr. Trump told the audience the AI doomsday warnings are “a hoax.” He said the technology and data centers are “great” and make people and states wealthy.
“AI is bigger than the internet,” Mr. Trump said, and opponents “are playing right into the hands of China.”
Mr. Trump told the crowd, “We’re not going to let that happen,” and Mr. Jensen responded, “You’re right. We are not going to let that happen, sir.”
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