Abstract:
U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessant criticized some well-known figures in the field of artificial intelligence for warning about the existential risks posed by this technology, calling these remarks alarmist and unhelpful, and called on the industry to self-regulate and come up with solutions.
In an interview published by Axios on Saturday, Bessant said: "I think we must be prepared for various situations, but on the other hand, some people in the artificial intelligence field will only be alarmist but cannot come up with solutions. This is not leadership."
Anthropic PBC CEO Dario Amodei, OpenAI head Sam Altman and xAI’s Elon Musk called in September to slow down the development of state-of-the-art models, citing the rising risks they pose to humans. Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates also warned that AI technology is powerful enough to cause "one billion deaths" and called on the government to regulate it.
U.S. President Donald Trump almost immediately rebutted those calls, calling warnings about the risks artificial intelligence poses to humanity a "hoax" and insisting that the United States must continue to advance AI development to stay ahead.
“I agree that people in the labs have to take responsibility,” Bessant said. “I think the labs are starting to embrace that idea.”
No new regulations
This week, Trump dismissed the idea of new federal regulations at a meeting with several industry executives. Attendees included Elon Musk, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, Meta Platforms Inc. Zuckerberg, Palantir Technologies Inc. CEO Alex Karp and OpenAI President Greg Brockman.
Trump told reporters at the time: "There is a view that there should be strong self-regulation, and we also automatically have supervision from the Department of Justice, the FBI, etc., but self-regulation is very important." In a non-binding agreement with Silicon Valley business leaders, he supported external agencies to assess the safety of artificial intelligence systems.
When asked about calls from AI industry executives for regulation, Bessant told Axios: "Then they should slow down."
“We want to accelerate the development of safety,” he said. “People in the lab have to take responsibility, and I agree with that.”
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