Trump & GOP reject calls for urgent AI regulation

there is precedent for this. Um, if you look at  how banks are regulated, right? There's there's. all kinds of, you know, there's all kinds of  rules about, you know, how banks are allowed. to do their business, right? Because, you know,  we we don't want to have financial crisis. And. one of the things that are done in some cases  is I think they're called supervisors in the. financial industry, but they're they're folks who  are independent of a company who are embedded in. the company daytoday to check their practices.  Uh, and I think we can do the same thing in I.

think we can do the same thing in AI. Elon Musk  and Sam Alton from Open AI, they are more or. less backing this idea. But President Trump,  not really. He's taking a hands-off approach, arguing the US cannot afford to fall behind China  in the AI race. I've said it from the beginning. Whoever wins AI, and we're leading by a lot,  whoever wins AI wins. Have you ever used it. yourself or maybe been use AI? Yeah, I do. How  do you use AI? But uh I would say you know for.

the most part you can use AI for a lot of things.  Well, I don't want to tell you. Want to get right. to CNN's Kevin Lipac live at the White House this  morning. To what extent does the White House see. this as something they have to respond to based  on really the incredible noise this weekend? Yeah, I think it's becoming clearer and clearer to  a lot of White House officials that this is going. to be uh perhaps the most dominant issue that they  will have to confront for the remainder of this.

year. That's even though uh President Trump seems  to be in the full steam ahead camp of all this, really downplaying the need to put any kind  of check by the administration on these. uh AI companies. In fact, yesterday he said that  warnings about some of the development were coming. from quote negative forces that he didn't identify  even though some of those voices are now the. leaders of the industry itself. You also heard uh  from David Saxs who is the top AI adviser at the.

White House really challenging some of uh what  these industry leaders have said that if they. want to slow the pace of their own development  they are the ones who can do that. He said, "The easiest way not to build super intelligence  is for you to agree not to build it." Now, in a. lot of ways, that position and the president's  position have really kind of isolated him, including from members of his own party, including  from some senior White House officials who really. do express some unease at the president's  unwillingness uh to talk about more regulations.

here. It certainly has opened up the president to  attack uh from Democrats. they are really seizing. upon this. In fact, uh the former President Barack  Obama said at a private fundraiser last week. that he thinks Democrats should put this issue  front and center on the midterm campaign trail. uh this year. And you have seen some Democrats  uh following suit, including the Democratic. Senator John Osaf from Georgia, who spoke about  this last night. Listen to what he said. See,

a capable president would move swiftly to secure  and reassure the American people. rush inspectors. into frontier labs, fortify the nation against  bioteterrorism, demand legislation from Congress, and lead the world toward an AI treaty. But  President Trump is compromised. Now, despite the. president's apparent lack of concern here, White  House officials are plotting some next steps. We. heard from Kevin Hasset, the top economist at  the White House, who said that a meeting uh.

would likely take place with top cyber and tech  officials uh here at the White House. You also. heard Mike Johnson, the House Speaker, say that he  wanted to get the president and lawmakers and top. industry officials into the same room to try and  determine how this uh would move forward. There. is another very important date coming up on this,  which is the president's meeting uh with Xihinping. from China. That will take place here at the White  House next week. It is expected that AI will be a.

subject of discussion, but at the two men's last  meeting back in May, they were unable to come up. with any kind of agreement. So, this is certainly,  I think, going to test Washington's ability, but obviously right now there is no consensus on  what to do or even whether to do anything going. forward. And I think it's important to note this  does seem like it's an issue that many people in. Washington just don't understand in a full sort  of scope of what they're dealing with here. Do you. think AI as it is right now poses an existential  threat and are you going to heed their request? Uh.

hey Jay, great to be with you. We we are heeding  their request and we are also calling upon them to. do responsible things and let me explain that. You  know I've been speaker for almost three years. We. started working on this almost immediately after  I was handed the gavl. One of the first things. I did was put together a an AI task force in the  House, a bipartisan group with an equal number of. members on both sides of the aisle that worked  deliberately over a long period of time to to.

debate and deliberate and research what the best  way there is to go to put guard rails, some safety. uh on in in place to make sure that AI doesn't get  out of control. Now, here's the thing. At the same. time, there is an obvious corporate responsibility  that the people who are creating these models have. to have to ensure that their products are safe. Uh  there was a I commend to your reading. David Saxs, who is the AISAR in the Trump White House in this  term, uh put out a great post last night on X and. he explained, look, the guys that are calling for  this are the ones that are pushing the frontier.

If they want to slow that down, that's fine, but  we also at the same time have to resist Congress. jumping in and imposing some sort of emergency  moratorum. It's got to be done right, safely, wisely. But we in order to solve that equation,  you need a lot of bright minds around the table. So Jake, here's what I'm proposing. I think  the leaders and the and the providers of all. these platforms, the the guys you named and a few  others, there's about seven or eight people who. are in charge of this. They need to come together  in a meeting with us and sit down and figure out.

what the right balance is. We cannot put a  moratorium on this because China will overlap. us. And that's the challenge. It's national  security balanced with the immediate security of. making sure the models are safe. Yeah. But they're  calling for that to happen as soon as possible. They're conveying this urgency. They're conveying  fears. They want a consistent set of rules of the. road for everyone. So when are you going to invite  these moguls, these AI experts to Washington? I mean, it sounds to me like they would they  would come tomorrow or Tuesday. Yeah. But Jake,

here's the problem. I've been meeting with all of  them individually since I became speaker. I mean, regularly, you know, I've visited with all  these guys. The problem is they all have a. different prescription on what they say the  regulation is supposed to be. The problem is. they're all competitors. Each one of them wants  to maintain an edge over the others. What David. Sax is saying in his post that was just published  late last night is that they need to take personal. responsibility first and we need to get them all  in a room at the same time and agree on what the.

guard rails are. That's the only way to do this.  If Congress just races in and does some sort of. emergency session to try to regulate AI, we will  lose the race to China. And that is a threat to. every single American. So, we've got to have  balance. We got to have steady hands at the. wheel. I I'm one of the ones calling for the the  summoning of this meeting. And I will be pushing. that myself because it is a top priority. But we  don't need everybody to panic right now. We need. to handle this new technology like we have others  in the past and make sure we're do we're doing.

everything we can responsibly to also not smother  American innovation. We have to do both things. simultaneously. I I promise you nobody's going to  accuse Congress of racing to do anything about AI. We've been covering this for years and and I I  I just promise you that's not going to happen. I mean, one of the things that's so terrifying is  in July, OpenAI technicians were shocked to find. out that their AI agents, these bots or whatever,  were communicating secretly with each other and. plotting an attack on a different AI platform  called Hugging Face. This is why Amade wrote.

in his letter, quote, "Left unchecked, AI could  outrun our ability to understand and control these. systems and so must be pursued very carefully, if  at all." Some of the ideas being floated include a. federal kill switch, the creation of a federal AI  regulatory agency, mandatory government approval. of frontier AI models before they're released.  Is there any of that that you think that you. could possibly support? Maybe all of it. And those  are great ideas, but if you compare this to the,

you know, other big technological advances like  nuclear power and and nuclear war and all of that, nuclear bombs, it took uh decades to put together  all the oversight and regulatory uh you know. boards and the international partnerships and  all of that. We don't have that much time here. So there is a sense of urgency about it. We are  looking at it carefully and we have been and and. Congress is a deliberative body, Jake. You know,  it takes a while to do that and Congress needs. to catch up. But the problem is, I'm telling you  again, the the the guys who are raising the alarms.

right now all have very different ideas on what  the guardrail should be. There's no consensus. among them. And Congress is obviously less  qualified than the people who are pushing this. frontier to know all the ins and outs of it. So,  this has to be a a partnership with the industry. itself, with the corporations that are doing this,  and with the policy and lawmakers. And that's a a. very uh complex thing to resolve. If we overstep  it, I'm telling you again, Jake, it it could be.

a national security threat for every American.  So, we have threats in both both sides of this. and we've got to do this in a very thoughtful,  deliberate way and we have to do it with urgency. and I'm committed to that as everybody else is.  Well, how how urgent? I mean, do you want this. meeting to take place this week? I'd do it. Yeah,  I'd do it tomorrow. We've got to summon everybody. together. I've talked to the president about  this as well. We they probably should be summoned. together at the White House and I think we need  to go in a big room, close the door, and sort this. out. and I'll be the one pushing it, forcing it  because I know all these guys individually. Again,

I've talked with them. They they've expressed  their concerns and I always say to them, you have to do your part. Of course, you have  a corporate responsibility to make sure your. products are safe. And they're the ones pushing  the envelope and and for them to cry out for us. to stop it, you know, this is a partnership.  They got to be responsible uh on their own.