US President Donald Trump has downplayed the need for his administration to place checks on artificial intelligence development, saying he is worried about ceding the US’s lead to China.
Speaking to reporters during his trip to Ireland on Sunday, Trump also said he acknowledged the need for some regulation but did not provide further details on potential measures.
“We 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’t be bringing it up, and they’re bringing up things that won’t happen,” Trump told reporters after watching the Irish Open at his resort in Doonbeg.
He said that with the US leading the development of AI over China, “frankly, I want to keep it that way because whoever wins AI wins.”
Trump’s comments came a day after Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei published a blog post saying the AI industry must slow the pace of improving the technology’s capabilities to allow time for guardrails.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman agreed with Amodei, adding that this was a primary topic of discussion at OpenAI in recent weeks. Elon Musk also publicly agreed with Amodei’s post.
The warnings follow ex-Anthropic and OpenAI researcher Jacob Coxon’s public resignation over concerns about AI’s potential to surpass human control, which sent ripple effects throughout the industry and Washington.
Multiple US lawmakers made calls for legislation to control AI development following Coxon’s resignation, including Democratic Congressman Josh Gottheimer and Republican Congressman Mike Lawler, who introduced a bipartisan House bill to prevent AI from operating without human oversight.
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Concerns over AI have become a major election-cycle issue amid the explosion of computing warehouses being built in numerous towns across the US. The new construction has raised alarms about diminishing water supplies and rising electricity bills.
Trump has maintained support for data centres, despite their increasing unpopularity among the American public.
Former White House AI czar David Sacks, who now co-chairs the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, challenged warnings from AI leaders, saying the industry is setting the pace for development and can slow it down independently.
“Demanding your preferred regulatory framework as the price of that will look like blackmail of the public and the political system. So just do it,” Sacks said.
