WASHINGTON (AP) —President Donald Trumpcalled off plans to sign a new executive order onartificial intelligencehours before an expected White House ceremony Thursday because he said he was worried the measure could dull America’s edge on AI technology.
Trump said he was postponing the Oval Office event with tech industry executives because he did not like what he saw in the order’s text. “We’re leading China, we’re leading everybody, and I don’t want to do anything that’s going to get in the way of that lead,” Trump told reporters.
The order would have established a framework for the government to vet the national security risks of the most advanced AI systems before their public release, according to a person familiar with the White House’s deliberations with the tech industry but not authorized to speak about them publicly. The directive was being characterized as a voluntary collaboration with participating U.S.-based tech companies, including Anthropic, OpenAI and Google, the person said.
The push for some kind of government action to review leading AI systems follows growing concern within the banking industry and other institutions about theleaps in AI’s abilitiesto find cybersecurity vulnerabilities in the world’s software.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and outgoing Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell convened an urgent meeting with Wall Street CEOs in April, warning them about the cybersecurity risks posed by Anthropic’s AI model, Claude Mythos.
The meeting, urgently assembled at the Treasury Department’s headquarters, was intended to ensure that banks were aware of the risks associated with the models, Bessent said at CNBC’s “Invest in America Forum” in Washington in April. “This new Anthropic model is very powerful,” he said. “Some banks are doing a better job in cybersecurity than others, and we want to have the ability to convene them and talk about what is best practices and where they should be heading.”
That led some allies of the Republican president to propose better methods for getting those AI tools in the hands of trusted cybersecurity experts.
Trump had pledged to undo the AI safety regulations set by his predecessor, Democratic President Joe Biden. Trump’s administration has viewed the AI sector as an engine tohelp deliver on his pledgesto expand the economy and he has promoted its major players at events at the White House and around the world. Last week, Trump hadtech CEOs in towfor a summit with China’s Xi Jinping.
Trump’s ambitions for the sector have collided with the fears of voters over the impact of the technology onAmerican life,jobsandelectricity bills. Republicans themselves are divided over whether to embrace the AI industry or side with voters who express skepticism about the technology.
Also complicating the government’s interest in working with Anthropic on cybersecurity is thegovernment’s ongoing legal fightwith the company. Trump in February ordered all U.S. agencies to stop using Anthropic’s chatbot Claude afteran unusually public clashbetween the Pentagon and CEO Dario Amodei.
Source: Fast Company
