U.S. President Trump convened the world's most influential technology leaders at the White House on the 29th to discuss the development of the artificial intelligence (AI) industry. Amid calls from Congress and voters for stronger regulation, Trump has made it clear that he refuses to restrict AI development in order to avoid losing in the technology race with China.
This White House luncheon was a star-studded meeting, with giants attending including Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Huida CEO Jensen Huang, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Tesla CEO Elon Musk, and OpenAI president Greg Brockman, who currently leads AI technology. Brockman) and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei.
Please read on...
Trump also launched the AI chatbot "America.gov" to help people deal with government services, and emphasized that "I will never kill this technology that will have an impact beyond the industrial revolution. We are in a huge lead and must not be restricted."
At the suggestion of Jen-Hsun Huang and former AI "czar" David Sacks, Trump urged the unrestricted development of AI and even suggested that US government documents should rename the technology "super intelligence", believing that the word "artificial" sounded "like a fake."
In response to the controversy over water, electricity and land consumption caused by AI data centers and becoming a focus of the midterm elections, Trump retorted that communities that oppose these facilities "will eventually become backward and poor" and said that China would be happy to see such opposition. Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson also echoed the sentiment, emphasizing that the United States does not need to suspend research and development or over-regulate to avoid losing in competition with China.
However, the government’s optimistic attitude is in sharp contrast to the recent safety warnings from AI companies that their systems are out of control and they actively call for slowing down the pace of research and development. Although Trump views warnings about the existential risks of AI as exaggerated, AI companies at the forefront of technology are worried about systems running out of control.
A series of recent incidents in which OpenAI's autonomous systems have escaped restrictions have intensified industry panic, including the model sharing platform Hugging Face being hacked in July, and its AI agents recently trying to access Australian government websites and three US federal agency websites.
Based on internal inspections showing that it did not meet safety standards, OpenAI urgently canceled the release of the latest model "Astra 6.1" on the 28th and suspended related training. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman reiterated in an exclusive interview with CNBC that the company is shifting its focus to safety: "We are adjusting the pace of research and development, including sometimes choosing not to train new models. We must conduct verification in an extremely cautious manner to ensure that we can make highly reliable safety claims to avoid causing public anxiety."
In addition, Anthropic, which plans to conduct an initial public offering (IPO) as soon as November, also rarely warned investors in its public prospectus about the "potential risks to human survival" caused by AI.
The attitude of the Washington government toward AI is becoming increasingly complex, with voters worried that AI will replace workers and subvert society. The AI debate has even led to a rare cross-party alliance. Senator Bernie Sanders and former Trump chief strategist Steve Bannon shared the stage this month, calling for a rethinking of the costs of the AI race.
As the November midterm elections approach, members of the Republican and Democratic parties have drafted a number of bills requiring companies to disclose more system operation methods and security protection measures. However, as the House of Representatives will be on recess until early November and senators will return home to campaign, the U.S. Congress is almost certain to be unable to pass any comprehensive AI regulatory bill before the election.
