Trump’s made his big call on AI. Humanity’s fate may ride on him being right

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President Donald Trump held court on the White House drive Tuesday, surrounded by the tech moguls who, in their own estimation, hold the planet’s fate in their hands.

Hours earlier, the rising tide of warnings by AI firms had taken another dark turn with the revelation that Anthropic fears its models pose a “catastrophic or existential risk to humanity.” The news came, incongruously, in the prospectus — obtained by Reuters — for a coming IPO that could raise tens of billions of dollars for the cash-hungry company.

The meeting offered a prime moment for presidential leadership of a nation concerned by the new technology’s risks , not least because many of Trump’s guests had been pleading for government regulation .

The response from Trump, whom House Speaker Mike Johnson correctly described as the only person with the clout to bring together such a group, was familiar: a rebrand.

“We’ve changed the name, officially, today. We’ve changed the name officially to SI,” Trump said. “SI instead of AI … You know what that means? ‘Super’ … That’s quite an announcement.” Trump had earlier vowed there would be no slowdown in AI research despite the chilling fears of its inventors. He declared that they’d signed a pledge to “self-police” that was “morally binding.”

The president, a man prone to hyperbole, couldn’t stop gushing about AI. Or SI. “It is the biggest thing there is, maybe the biggest thing there’s ever been,” he said, celebrating his latest attempt to reshape inconvenient political reality with a name change.

If, in years to come, Trump turns out to be correct that fears of AI’s pernicious possibilities are overblown, he could look like a visionary. His belief that AI represents a race for dominance over superpower foe China could deliver a geopolitical victory to the United States. And his argument that over-regulation could strangle an industry critical to America’s economic stability should not be dismissed, given the industry’s importance to future economic growth and wider prosperity.

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But Trump’s at times glib performance also raised some troubling questions.

It hardly seems as though he’s emerging from a period of personal soul-searching that such a disruptive technology might demand. President George W. Bush, by contrast, spent a summer mulling the morality and utility of stem cell research on his ranch in Texas in 2001. Trump blocks out anyone talking about the risks of AI or the threat that rogue agents might cause, calling such concerns a Democratic Party “hoax” meant to hurt Republicans.

Trump’s answer to voters who worry that AI will take their jobs, or who look askance at data centers’ enormous strains on electrical grids and water supplies, is an optimistic promise that such installations are “going to be very popular” and will make everyone rich.

He’s causing himself an immediate political problem. Some 75% of Americans view the growth of AI with fear and concern, according to a CNN/SSRS poll last week, and 71% want the federal government to do more to regulate it. Higher electricity bills attributed to the immense proliferation of data centers are deepening affordability frustrations among voters — a top midterm election issue.

Longer term, Trump has left himself extraordinarily exposed to a potential political backlash if the now-regular revelations about AI attacking corporate or government websites herald a true national or global crisis. If it turns out that AI firms, as he insists, can’t regulate themselves, it will be on him.

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Trump launched a ‘damn good’ AI chatbot. It debunks many of his false claims

Trump’s blasé attitude mirrors the approach he took to the start of the Covid-19 pandemic in his first term, when he seemed to believe that wishing the threat away would expunge it. Most notoriously, he once argued that if the country stopped testing for the virus, it would have no more cases.

More fundamentally, Trump’s assurances that the AI industry can police itself are open to debate. There’s little evidence that tech industry titans — especially those whose social media brands changed modern society and the nature of childhood — engage in deep thought about the societal impact of their creations.

This is an industry that rarely appears to believe it is accountable to citizens and their democratic leaders, or to desire meaningful oversight and guardrails. The inventors of new technologies have quickly become oligarchs with extraordinary power, including the capacity to influence elections — like Elon Musk, with his massive campaign funding for Trump and other GOP candidates.

So to believe that competing titans — not all of whose firms may survive the competition — will cooperate for the common good, or, as Trump said, because of “a love for our country,” requires an enormous leap of faith.

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Ideologically, Trump’s second term has been an exercise on removing restraints on industry, business and wealthy interests across every sector. Personally, Trump accepts few restraints on his behavior. He hates guardrails around the presidency, so it’s no surprise he abhors them in relation to the tech industry.

Yet a blanket refusal to impose any safety restraints on the AI industry raises the question of why it should be different from other areas of American life. Civil aviation, for example, is so safe because every accident or incident has been investigated for generations, and the lessons incorporated into safety measures. Governments have long concluded that safety and well-being of the populace mean the food industry, medical advances, the automobile industry and others cannot be trusted to take care of the public welfare over their own narrower interests. Rules are enforced by laws, regulations and penalties such as fines.

So why should the AI industry be any different?

Kristian Hammond, a professor of computer science at Northwestern University, explained the logic of regulation. “You only put guardrails on things that are broken that are not under your control,” Hammond told CNN’s Kasie Hunt. “If you had a car that … was really fast and really easy to steer but every once in a while it would just slam you into a wall, you wouldn’t say, ‘Oh, we need guardrails.’ You’d say, ‘We need to fix the steering.’”

Hammond went on: “The place where we are with AI right now is we don’t have the explicit controls that we need in order to make these things effective.”

A subtext of Trump’s presidency is the blunt assertion of power. On Tuesday, the AI industry became the latest example of his apparent conviction that almost everything in American life is his to control.

As he lunched with AI chiefs, the president released a seating chart showing him flanked by Musk — the world’s richest person — and Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia, the world’s richest company. Later, the photo op on the White House drive positioned Trump as the dominant figure, towering over some of the richest and most brilliant technological pioneers in human history.

At one point, a reporter asked the tech leaders — some of whom sparked near-hysteria by warning of the dire impact of AI — whether they agreed with Trump that no regulation was necessary and that self-policing would blunt any destructive potential of their models.

They didn’t get the chance to answer.

“I mean, I can tell you the answer is yes,” Trump said, jumping in. “We discussed it with the top about 40 people,” he added, before turning to Huang, who has dismissed AI fears as “doomsday narratives” and who told reporters Tuesday that “there’s no conflict between innovation, technology and safety.”

Trump’s stance on AI is emblematic of a presidency that unfolds as a series of gut calls, big bets and a reluctance to publicly explain his reasoning — or to debate potential courses of action while taking the nation into his confidence.

He has a lot riding on AI. The industry is propping up the economy. And his personal fortune is highly exposed to the tech industry.

The nation, and the world, has more at stake. A lot more than Trump’s midterm election fate and legacy is riding on him getting this one right.

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周二，唐纳德·特朗普总统在白宫大道上接见了一群科技巨头，这些巨头们自认为掌握着地球的命运。

几个小时前，人工智能公司发出的警告浪潮又添新变数，Anthropic公司透露，该公司担心其模型可能对人类构成“灾难性或生存性风险”。令人啼笑皆非的是，这一消息竟然出现在路透社获得的该公司即将进行的首次公开募股（IPO）招股说明书中，而此次IPO有望为这家急需资金的公司筹集数百亿美元。

这次会议为总统展现其对国家应对新技术风险的领导力提供了一个绝佳的机会，尤其因为特朗普的许多宾客都曾恳求政府进行监管。

众议院议长迈克·约翰逊正确地指出，特朗普是唯一有影响力将这样一个团体聚集在一起的人，而特朗普的回应也似曾相识：重新包装。

“今天，我们正式更改了名称。我们正式将名称改为SI，”特朗普说。“SI代替了AI……你们知道这意味着什么吗？‘超级’……这可是个重大宣布。”此前，尽管人工智能的发明者们忧心忡忡，特朗普仍誓言不会放慢人工智能研究的步伐。他宣称，他们已经签署了一份“自我监管”的承诺书，这份承诺书“具有道德约束力”。

这位总统向来喜欢夸大其词，他对人工智能（AI）赞不绝口。或者更确切地说是系统智能（SI）。“这是最伟大的发明，或许是史上最伟大的发明，”他说道，以此庆祝自己最近试图通过更名来重塑棘手的政治现实。

如果未来几年，特朗普关于人工智能潜在危害的担忧被夸大的说法最终被证明是正确的，那么他或许会被视为一位有远见的先驱。他认为人工智能代表着一场与超级大国对手中国争夺主导权的竞赛，这或许会为美国带来地缘政治上的胜利。鉴于人工智能产业对未来经济增长和更广泛繁荣的重要性，他关于过度监管会扼杀这一对美国经济稳定至关重要的产业的论点也不容忽视。

卡尔·蒙顿/法新社/法新社/盖蒂图片社

但特朗普有时轻率的表现也引发了一些令人不安的问题。

他似乎并没有经历一段面对如此颠覆性技术可能需要的深刻反思期。相比之下，乔治·W·布什总统曾在2001年夏天待在德克萨斯州的农场里，认真思考干细胞研究的道德性和实用性。特朗普对任何谈论人工智能风险或失控特工可能造成的威胁的言论都置之不理，称这些担忧是民主党为了打击共和党而捏造的“骗局”。

特朗普对那些担心人工智能会抢走他们工作的选民，或者对数据中心给电网和供水带来的巨大压力感到担忧的选民的回应是，他乐观地承诺，这样的设施“将会非常受欢迎”，并且会让每个人都变得富有。

他正在给自己制造一个迫在眉睫的政治难题。根据CNN/SSRS上周的民调显示，约75%的美国人对人工智能的发展感到恐惧和担忧，71%的人希望联邦政府加强对人工智能的监管。数据中心的激增导致电费上涨，加剧了选民对能源负担能力的不满——这是中期选举的热门议题。

从长远来看，如果人工智能攻击企业或政府网站的事件频发，最终演变成一场真正的国家或全球危机，那么特朗普将面临极大的政治反弹风险。如果人工智能公司真的像他所坚持的那样无法自我监管，那么责任将完全在他身上。

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特朗普推出了一款“非常棒”的人工智能聊天机器人。它驳斥了他的许多虚假言论。

特朗普的漠不关心态度与他第一任期内应对新冠疫情初期的做法如出一辙，当时他似乎认为只要不去想它，威胁就会消失。最臭名昭著的是，他曾声称，如果美国停止病毒检测，就不会再有病例了。

更根本的是，特朗普关于人工智能行业能够自我监管的说法值得商榷。几乎没有证据表明，科技巨头——尤其是那些社交媒体品牌改变了现代社会和童年本质的公司——会深入思考其产品对社会的影响。

这个行业似乎很少认为自己应该对公民及其民主领导人负责，也不渴望有效的监督和约束。新技术发明者迅速成为拥有非凡权力的寡头，甚至有能力影响选举——例如埃隆·马斯克，他曾为特朗普和其他共和党候选人提供巨额竞选资金。

因此，要相信相互竞争的巨头们——并非所有公司都能在竞争中生存下来——会为了共同利益而合作，或者像特朗普所说的那样，因为“热爱我们的国家”而合作，需要极大的信念。

乔纳森·恩斯特/路透社

从意识形态上看，特朗普的第二个任期旨在解除各行各业、商业和富豪利益的种种限制。就个人而言，特朗普几乎不受任何行为约束。他憎恶总统权力的种种限制，因此，他对科技行业的限制深恶痛绝也就不足为奇了。

然而，对人工智能行业完全不施加任何安全限制的做法，不禁令人质疑，为何人工智能行业与其他美国领域有所不同？例如，民用航空之所以如此安全，是因为每一起事故或事件都经过几代人的调查，并将经验教训融入安全措施之中。各国政府早已认定，为了保障民众的安全和福祉，食品行业、医疗进步、汽车行业以及其他行业都不能被信任，它们只会优先考虑自身狭隘的利益，而忽视公众福祉。规则的执行依赖于法律、法规以及罚款等处罚措施。

那么，人工智能行业又有什么理由例外呢？

西北大学计算机科学教授克里斯蒂安·哈蒙德解释了监管的逻辑。“你只会给那些你无法控制的、已经损坏的东西安装护栏，”哈蒙德告诉CNN的凯西·亨特。“如果你有一辆……速度很快、操控也很容易的车，但偶尔会把你撞到墙上，你不会说，‘哦，我们需要护栏。’你会说，‘我们需要修理转向系统。’”

哈蒙德接着说：“我们目前在人工智能领域所处的阶段是，我们还没有掌握使这些技术有效发挥作用所需的明确控制措施。”

特朗普总统任期的一个潜在主题是直白地行使权力。周二，人工智能产业成为他坚信美国生活中几乎所有事物都应由他掌控的最新例证。

在与人工智能领域领军人物共进午餐时，总统公布了一张座位图，图中他两侧分别是世界首富马斯克和世界最富有的公司英伟达的首席执行官黄仁勋。随后，在白宫车道上的合影中，特朗普以绝对优势占据主导地位，凌驾于人类历史上一些最富有、最杰出的科技先驱之上。

有一次，一位记者问这些科技领袖——其中一些人曾因警告人工智能的严重影响而引发近乎歇斯底里的恐慌——他们是否同意特朗普的观点，即没有必要进行监管，自我监管将削弱其模型的任何破坏性潜力。

他们没有机会回答。

“我的意思是，我可以告诉你答案是肯定的，”特朗普插话道。“我们和大约40位高层人士讨论过这个问题，”他补充道，然后转向黄仁勋。黄仁勋曾驳斥人工智能的担忧是“末日论调”，并在周二告诉记者，“创新、技术和安全之间不存在冲突。”

特朗普在人工智能问题上的立场，象征着他的总统任期充满了凭直觉做出的决定、孤注一掷的豪赌，并且不愿公开解释他的理由——或者在争取全国人民信任的同时，也不愿讨论可能的行动方案。

他在人工智能领域投入巨大。这个行业支撑着经济发展。而且他​​的个人财富也高度依赖于科技行业。

国家乃至全世界都面临着更大的风险。特朗普能否把握住这次机会，不仅仅关乎中期选举的成败和政治遗产，更关乎他能否成功。