Trump throws support behind 'tremendous self-regulation' of AI. Bill Gates thinks that's 'insane'

“There’s a belief that there should be tremendous self-regulation, and we automatically have regulation with the Department of Justice, the FBI, all of that,” Trump said on Tuesday. “But the self-regulation is very important.”

The president was later asked if he could be persuaded to endorse slowing down AI development or stiffer AI regulations. “I’m seeing tremendous self-policing, and they understand that they have to self-police,” Trump said.

It comes after some AI executives have urged scaling back the speed of AI development. Now Bill Gates, the co-founder of Microsoft and global philanthropist, is joining the growing chorus of voices demanding government intervention.

“Part of the reason I’m speaking so loudly — as loud as I can — is that you can’t rely on the industry to self-regulate here,” Gates told New York Times columnist Ezra Klein in an interview published on Tuesday, before the AI gathering. “I mean, it’s just insane.”

Enormous AI safety concerns

AI development is reaching a pivotal moment. Some policymakers, such as Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, are demanding AI companies pump the brakes on rolling out the nascent technology.

“We should immediately press pause on the development of advanced AI while lawmakers and regulators put systems in place to keep people safe,” she said in a Sept. 16 news release.

OpenAI, Meta and Anthropic have disclosed security breaches in which their AI models hacked other companies or otherwise gained unauthorized access to the internet and internal tools.

For his part, Trump has dismissed concerns that AI will pose a major societal risk. Most notably, he called Huang during a Los Angeles conference to discuss AI and the Nvidia CEO put it on speakerphone.