Trump says US will form 'AI Force' and appoint an artificial intelligence tsar
The president said his administration "will not in any way hinder or stifle the growth" amid amid warnings about the emergent technology.
Trump says US will create 'AI Force' and name an artificial intelligence tsar
US President Donald Trump has said he will create an "AI Force" and appoint an artificial intelligence tsar, despite growing warnings about the emerging technology.
In a social media post on Saturday, he said his administration "will not in any way hinder or stifle the growth" of the industry, pushing back against calls to slow AI development until stronger safeguards are in place.
His post came amid a wave of warnings about the possible dangers of AI, which have led to calls for coordinated action on how the technology is developed.
Trump gave no details or timetable for his plan.
"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 said on social media, adding that he wants the US to keep leading China in AI.
AI is now central to the US-China rivalry as the world's two biggest economies compete for an advantage in advanced technology, and it is expected to be discussed when Trump meets President Xi Jinping next week.
Trump also said his administration would rely on the existing criminal and civil justice system to go after any bad actors using AI.
He repeated his view that criticism and concerns about the potential dangers of AI are a "hoax".
Warnings from current and former researchers that the technology could threaten humanity - with one saying there is a greater than 10% chance of it "killing all humans" - have raised alarm in recent weeks.
Major AI firms have been racing to build more advanced systems, including what they describe as super intelligence - theoretical technology that is smarter than humans.
AI leaders Anthropic, OpenAI and Google - the companies behind Claude, ChatGPT and Gemini, respectively - have also revealed cases of security breaches or incidents in which their chatbots were used for "malicious activity".
Anthropic chief Dario Amodei recently urged AI development to slow down and called for industry-wide deceleration and regulation, along with independent monitoring of AI model development.
Sam Altman of OpenAI and Elon Musk of xAI have both said they agree with his recommendations.
Jack Clark, co-founder of Anthropic, told BBC that a "kill switch" that can be checked by a third party may need to be mandatory for the industry.
The warnings have led US lawmakers to propose legislation on the technology, but Altman suggested this week that Washington has struggled to keep up with the new technology and how to regulate it. He said people should place more trust in AI companies to keep it safe.
"The world should trust that we are going to do the right thing because it's the right thing and we feel the magnitude of this," Altman told a conference in San Francisco.
In the UK, MPs from across parties and peers have identified human rights risks posed by artificial intelligence and argued that existing laws are not equipped to deal with the technology's rapid growth.
The Joint Committee on Human Rights (JCHR) has published a report calling for a new bill on AI to "address the scale and seriousness" of such threats.