The Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, Mike Johnson, rejected pushing for a suspension in the development of artificial intelligence and called for a meeting with industry leaders to address the risks associated with this technology and its impact on national security.
The stance of the Republican leader comes after executives such as Dario Amodei, from Anthropic; Sam Altman, from OpenAI; and Elon Musk, from xAI, raised the need to slow down the pace of AI development due to its potential risks.
“If they want to slow that down, that’s fine with me. But at the same time, we also have to resist Congress stepping in and imposing some kind of emergency moratorium. It has to be done the right way, safely and sensibly,” Johnson said in an interview with CNN.
The Speaker of the House indicated that a meeting with industry representatives could take place this Monday or Tuesday, although he ruled out advancing legislation to suspend AI development for now.
Johnson argued that the discussion should not only consider the safety of the models but also the ability of the United States to maintain its technological leadership against China.
“We can’t impose a moratorium on this because China is going to surpass us. And that’s the challenge. It’s the balance between national security and the immediate security of ensuring the models are safe,” he stated.
The Republican leader insisted that any eventual regulation must prevent the development of these technologies from getting out of control, but without hindering American innovation.
“We have to make sure we don’t lose our edge in the global competition on this with China, because that would represent a threat to national security,” he said in another interview with NBC.
Johnson’s statements come after Dario Amodei, founder of Anthropic, published an essay calling to move at “a slower pace” in the development of artificial intelligence given the risks that could arise from increasingly advanced models.
Among the threats mentioned by Amodei are the potential use of AI for cyberattacks and bioterrorism, a possible loss of control over systems, and the effects these technologies could have on the economy.
Altman and Musk also joined these warnings amid a debate that is now beginning to move to the U.S. Congress.
Despite rejecting a halt in development, Johnson said he supports “meaningful regulation” that allows controlling the risks of artificial intelligence, but without “stifling American innovation.”
