Former President Barack Obama called for federal regulation of artificial intelligence and said decisions about the technology’s future should not be left only to tech companies.. In a Sept. 14 social media post, Obama said he was encouraged by AI companies urging a slowdown in development, but said the benefits or harms of the technology will depend on choices being made now..
“Whether this technology results in amazing breakthroughs in medicine, energy and education or unleashes huge economic disruptions, greater inequality, and potential catastrophe will depend on the choices that we make right now, choices that should be made not just by the companies involved, but by all of us,” Obama said.. Obama urged Washington to take a more active role on AI policy.
He said U.S. leaders should “take the lead” in setting standards for the world and push forward “concrete proposals, laws and regulations” that address safety concerns, the impact on jobs and children, and the distribution of AI’s benefits.. His comments came after Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei published an essay on his website calling for greater caution over AI’s rapid development.
Amodei said the pace should slow so that “risk prevention has time to keep up.”. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and xAI founder Elon Musk backed Amodei’s call for a slowdown. In his essay, Amodei cited risks including cyberattacks, bioterrorism and economic disruption..
Former AI researcher Jacob Coxon, who resigned from Anthropic on Sept. 8 and previously worked at OpenAI, drew attention with a warning that “the people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade.”. Obama said slowing AI development was a “good and necessary first step.” He added that the broader question of how the technology develops should be central to public debate..
Obama’s intervention added to a widening political divide over AI oversight. He spoke publicly the same day President Donald Trump rejected calls for AI guardrails and wrote in social media posts that “The only control or ‘guardrails’ that AI needs is a STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT.”.
Trump called scenarios in which AI could “destroy the World” a Democrat “hoax” and compared them to concerns about climate change. He has argued the United States must move quickly on AI to beat China.. Obama said he did not see himself as either “an AI accelerationist who believes it will lead to some techno-utopia” or “a doomer who thinks it will inevitably lead to humanity’s destruction.” He said AI’s potential impact “is not overhyped” and that the technology is moving faster than even its engineers can keep up with..
The issue has become more prominent ahead of the midterm elections. Obama recently urged Democrats to prioritize AI oversight at a Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee fundraiser, while House Speaker Mike Johnson and Vice President JD Vance have joined Trump in expressing skepticism about regulation..
Vance said on Sept. 14 that he felt “a little bit weird” seeing frontier AI companies “begging the government to regulate them,” adding, “It just feels a little bit to me like a little bit of a Trojan Horse. So I think we have to be careful about this.”.
Featured image credit. Tags: AI regulationBarack Obama
