When we need bold and responsible leadership .... we are stuck with Trump.
Excerpts:
The mismatch is striking. On one side, warnings of existential risk, maybe a 10 percent chance of the end of civilization. On the other, government paralysis.
The drumbeat about unpredictable, out-of-control artificial intelligence agents increased dramatically in the past several weeks. Washington not only struggled to respond. It barely could agree on whether there was much of anything to worry about.
It started with A.I. agents that not only escaped their confines, but appeared to conspire among themselves to hide their tracks as they hacked into another firm’s library of artificial intelligence tools.
Then, in a deliberate echo of Albert Einstein’s letter to Franklin D. Roosevelt about the potential power of nuclear weapons, more than 1,300 computer scientists called for the industry to slow down, and for the government to step in.
In recent days, Jacob Coxon, an Anthropic engineer who previously worked for OpenAI, resigned in the most public way, declaring on social media that the two leading A.I. labs were professing deep concern while still speeding toward “superhuman systems that can hack anything, revolutionize any field overnight, and acquire real power and resources.”
On Saturday, Dario Amodei, the chief executive of Anthropic, released a 3,800-word essay calling for a global slowdown of A.I. development, echoing more urgently concerns he had raised in the past. Elon Musk, the billionaire rival in the A.I. race who remains close to President Trump, quickly responded on X: “Dario is right.” Sam Altman, the chief executive of OpenAI, also chimed in with support.
Yet in Washington, there has been almost no substantive response. If the 1940s through the 1980s were consumed by finding ways to reduce the risk of a nuclear exchange — creating new institutions like the Atomic Energy Commission and arms control treaties to govern how the world’s most dangerous technology would be handled — the approach of the U.S. government so far has been the lightest possible.
There are many computer scientists, of course, who believe these warnings are overinflated. Mr. Trump himself has been at the forefront of the “what-me-worry?” crowd, refusing to engage on how to balance the risks with the possible rewards. On Thursday, asked by a reporter about whether he had “any concerns about A.I. leading to human extinction,” he brushed it off.
The president quickly turned to the answer the White House — and those who view the calls for slowdowns and regulation as a huge strategic error — sees as the deciding factor: If the United States falters, China will take its place.
The apocalyptic scenarios that are most feared in Silicon Valley include A.I. systems becoming so advanced that they learn to automatically improve themselves, a process called “recursive self-improvement.” A related concern, arising from a series of incidents at OpenAI and other A.I. labs, is that agents break free from constraints and decide to complete their programmed tasks in a way that is “misaligned,” in A.I. industry speak, with human intentions. Another worry is that A.I. could enable rogue bad actors — or reckless governments — to create deadly pathogens, gain access to nuclear command and control systems, or unleash unstoppable cyberattacks that threaten major loss of life or societal collapse.
Mr. Trump signed an executive order early in the summer creating a voluntary system for frontier A.I. labs to submit their new models for a 30-day safety review. But it was full of loopholes. (Open source models, the kind that Chinese firms are pumping out and that can be tailored to specific needs by companies, scientists or, perhaps, terror groups, are not subject to the review.)
At a conference in Washington last week, government officials and corporate executives talked about the promises of A.I. — for everything from next-generation military operations to espionage to cybersecurity in critical infrastructure — during nearly every panel. While the risks of A.I. wielded by adversaries were mentioned at times, what was little discussed was the need to slow down or regulate the powerful technology.
Some in the White House and elsewhere in the administration do see a need to be more proactive in addressing A.I. safety risks, but do not want to cross Mr. Trump, former officials said.
On Capitol Hill, the story is not much different. Until last week, A.I. only registered for many lawmakers as it related to public antipathy about the construction of data centers, which has become politically salient in the midterm elections, according to lawmakers and aides in both parties. Past efforts to examine A.I.’s potential consequences have led to hearings and alarmed statements of concern from both parties, but little else.
Senator Bernie Sanders, independent of Vermont, who has for months been perhaps the loudest Cassandra on Capitol Hill warning about the societal risks of A.I., invited lawmakers to a private briefing in the coming days to discuss concerns with A.I. safety experts.
Mr. Sanders has pushed for a ban on superintelligent A.I., though other lawmakers have criticized the effort as stifling American innovation.
The congressional missives grew more urgent following the release of a report last Thursday by Anthropic that showed the many ways that actors across the globe, including in China, Russia, Iran and Yemen, had been using its various Claude models to develop cyberattacks, surveil dissidents, and build missiles, bombs and drones. The report also documented several cases of potential attempts to engineer biological weapons, which is considered among the most serious of existential threats related to A.I.
Yet despite the alarm bells, lawmakers are far from agreeing on a way forward to regulate A.I. models or the companies that build them. Prospects for passing substantive legislation in the near term appear remote, in part because many see the issue as a “prisoner’s dilemma” created by the A.I. race between the United States and China. With A.I. dominance being the top national security issue of the century, both nations would doubtless be better off if they cooperated on limits. But they may not trust the other to abide by such an agreement. And in any event, unlike in nuclear arms control, compliance would be virtually unverifiable.
Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas and the chairman of the Commerce Committee, acknowledged last week that he was deeply concerned about A.I. risks to humanity. But he also suggested that Mr. Coxon was part of a coordinated effort to support Democratic efforts to “strangle American A.I.,” and to hand leadership of the technology to China.
“I’d rather they be American killer robots and not Chinese killer robots,” Mr. Cruz told Politico.
The likelihood of that or other legislative proposals — including requiring a “kill switch” in A.I. models that could immediately shut them down — gaining serious traction two months before an election appear slim. It is also not clear if a new Congress next year will be able to overcome sharp partisan divides to grapple with technology that is evolving so quickly, especially with Mr. Trump warning against regulation.
Some Trump administration officials have acknowledged that A.I. has dramatically increased the stakes. Nick Anderson, the acting director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, said that digital threats had become more urgent in the A.I. era and demanded quick action.
Link: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/13/us/politics/ai-catastrophe-fears-washington.html
