warning by AI researcher Jacob Coxon<\/a> that \u201cthe people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade.\u201d\n <\/p>\n\n Sharply different reactions to the extraordinary set of alarms reflect more than Washington\u2019s polarization; they reveal a fractured consensus about whether AI indeed poses a threat to humanity.\n <\/p>\n
\n Critics worry computerized agents could become so powerful that they could conspire to destroy the world. Skeptics dismiss doom-laden cautions. They accuse tech moguls of hyping their own products. And fearmongering has accompanied technology breakthroughs since the Industrial Revolution.\n <\/p>\n
\n There\u2019s also an ideological angle to the controversy because of the Trump administration\u2019s instinct for minimal regulation, which doesn\u2019t distinguish between traditional industries and a far more powerful AI sector.\n <\/p>\n
\n Trump also has strong personal and political incentives to oppose a slow-down.\n <\/p>\n
\n The AI industry is a giant growth engine and he cannot afford for the bubble to burst and worsen his political standing. And his critics will wonder whether personal investments in the digital economy by administration officials will interfere with their capacity to fairly oversee the AI industry.\n <\/p>\n
\n Lightning-fast breakthroughs in a sector that is complex and opaque means AI is not just emulating the historic pattern of new technology outpacing the capacity of governments to regulate. It\u2019s not clear that leaders who\u2019d be needed to act even fully understand its properties and possible threats.\n <\/p>\n
\n And Trump makes a fair point when he warns that the US would be ceding a military edge to its superpower rival if it fell behind in AI. \u201cWe\u2019re leading China in AI. We\u2019re the most sophisticated country in the world, and frankly, I want to keep it that way,\u201d he told reporters Sunday.\n <\/p>\n
\n Other administration officials warn against unilateral US disarmament in AI. Kevin Hassett, director of the National Economic Council, said on \u201cState of the Union\u201d that the \u201cfar bigger risk\u201d was that \u201ca malevolent actor\u201d with designs on bioweapons could use \u201can AI that is better than the one we have to protect us.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n Constraining AI for humanity\u2019s benefit would take an international agreement. But this would require the kind of pooled sovereignty Trump disdains and contradict the administration\u2019s principle that every aspect of America\u2019s power must be deployed to strengthen unilateral dominance.\n <\/p>\n
\n And would foreign authoritarians or non-state actors play by the new rules?\n <\/p>\n
\n Still, autonomous computer agents wouldn\u2019t only threaten democracies. They\u2019d also challenge the core governing principle of China\u2019s Communist Party \u2014 the use of state power to impose national stability. Trump is scheduled to have a Washington summit with President Xi Jinping this month, which both men could use to carve out a global leadership position.\n <\/p>\n
\n And it\u2019s not just China: Britain\u2019s King Charles III is hosting his own summit on AI this week, including with representatives from Nvidia, Google DeepMind, OpenAI and Anthropic, as well as with UK officials.\n <\/p>\n
\n But Trump\u2019s attitude toward cataclysmic warnings of rampant AI suggests he\u2019s done little philosophical soul-searching at a turning point for the human race. \u201cI\u2019m not downplaying, but, you know, it\u2019s going to be more good than bad by a lot,\u201d Trump told reporters on Air Force One Sunday.\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cIt\u2019s going to be fine,\u201d the president told GB News last week. \u201cWe\u2019ll always have something to stop them. We\u2019ll have a little gear. Boom.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n Trump\u2019s blas\u00e9 approach recalls his cavalier response to Covid-19 \u2014 which thwarted his political and economic priorities. He once suggested that the country would have fewer confirmed cases of the virus if it simply stopped testing.\n <\/p>\n
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\n A laissez-faire attitude defines his administration. David Sacks, co-chair of the President\u2019s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, wrote on X Saturday that AI leaders should take responsibility for their industry. \u201cStop pretending you need anyone else\u2019s permission.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n Still, there\u2019s significant bipartisan concern. Texas GOP Sen. Ted Cruz said that \u201cwe need substantially more regulation when it comes to AI,\u201d in an interview with Politico last week. Independent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders has proposed a bill to permanently ban superintelligent AI and temporarily pause advanced AI development pending federal regulation. Sen. Josh Hawley, Republican of Missouri, last week launched a probe into OpenAI over a rogue attack by its AI agents on another firm, Hugging Face, in July.\n <\/p>\n
\n But senior Democrats are pushing for a much faster government response as they position for November\u2019s midterms.\n <\/p>\n
\n Democratic House leader Hakeem Jeffries said on ABC News\u2019 \u201cThis Week\u201d Sunday that Congress should take \u201cdecisive action\u201d to slow down AI development and pledged that Democrats would meet to agree to a plan this week.\n <\/p>\n
\n Democratic Sen. Ruben Gallego warned: \u201cWhen we created a nuclear weapon, the nuclear weapon did not have the decisionmaking power to drop a nuclear weapon. AI has the capability and will have the capability to make decisions like that.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cThis is more akin to Dr. Frankenstein telling us, \u2018The monster is loose, help me stop the monster,\u2019\u201d the Arizona lawmaker said on \u201cState of the Union.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n Some AI experts believe such scenarios overstate the capacity of AI. But that may not matter from a political perspective if public anxiety grows.\n <\/p>\n
\n Trump may not like it, but this question now seems critical to the midterms and American politics more generally: Who controls AI \u2014 humanity or machines?\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If a terrorist threat led subject experts to warn of a near-term existential menace to humanity, the weight…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":892090,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[256,254,255,64,63,105],"class_list":["post-892089","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/892089","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=892089"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/892089\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/892090"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=892089"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=892089"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=892089"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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