President Donald Trump is doubling down on artificial intelligence, and is launching a new task force that may help dispel doubts over the risks posed by the new technology.
In a Truth Social post on Saturday, Trump said he was forming an "AI Force" and will be soon appointing an AI "Czar" to foster the AI buildout while shielding it from bad actors.
"We will not in any way hinder or stifle the Growth of this incredible Industry," he wrote in a Truth Social post. "Rather, we will cherish it, help it, and watch over it, as it grows! However, we will also be looking for BAD, and we can do that, very easily, with our already existing Criminal and Civil Justice System."
Trump's announcement comes in the wake of calls to slow down AI development and rollout over existential fears that models are evolving at a faster pace than even their makers can understand, and will prove hard to control. Last week, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei penned a letter last week calling on other AI firms and global lawmakers to adopt a slower pace of improvement for AI models.
Trump dismissed Amodei's comments, calling fears that AI is "going to take over the world" a "hoax" in a series of Truth Social posts on Monday. He also emphasized the importance of beating China in the AI race.
He repeated those claims in his post on Saturday.
"AI is the next Industrial Revolution, or Internet, but will be even larger and more impactful, possibly as much as 25% of our Country's GDP," he wrote.
The geopolitical stakes when it comes to AI are, in fact, quite high: The U.S. and China are already racing to entrench their versions of AI across the globe and in specific spheres of influence. While the U.S.'s models are currently more advanced, China's open-source models are cheaper, and are catching up to American frontier models.
The topic is likely to be a big one when Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping meet next week. There is some scope for cooperation on AI safety, such as in human control over advances models and cyber risks, writes Nguyen Hoang Nam, China economist at Capital Economics.
"Still, fierce competition will limit how far this can go," Nguyen writes. "With the U.S. viewing leadership in AI as paramount and China hot on its heels, both sides are unlikely to accept any restraints that could leave them at a relative disadvantage to the other."
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