Earlier this week, I wrote about the bipartisan coalition of concerned citizens and politicians that met at the Pro-Human Assembly in DC. Disparate factions, often wildly opposed on most issues, found common ground in demanding that the American people, not “tech oligarchs”, steer the future.
For the upcoming AI summit, it’s looking like the White House may favor the oligarchs.
Presidents Trump and Xi Jinping will meet next week to discuss the future of AI. A formal state dinner is planned, and POLITICO reports that AI industry CEOs including OpenAI’s Sam Altman and NVIDIA’s Jensen Huang will attend. (It’s unclear whether Dario Amodei of Anthropic was invited.)
Their attendance would bode ill for the chances of an international agreement to stop or slow the AI race; the CEOs in attendance have a vested interest in preventing or weakening such an agreement. Altman runs one of the AI firms that’s been pushing the frontier, and Huang has dismissed the danger AI poses to our species as “hysterical.” He also vocally advocates the sale of AI chips to China, which would accelerate the AI race, advantage a U.S. strategic rival, and nicely bolster NVIDIA’s bottom line.
The announcement left a disgusting taste in my mouth, but the week’s political news isn’t all bad. The House committee that advises on strategic competition with China announced an upcoming hearing on “the risks of AI, best practices in AI governance, and the path forward toward binding international safeguards to ensure safety and human control of this technology.”
The hearing is scheduled for September 23, a day before the US-China summit, at the behest of Democrat Ro Khanna. I commend Khanna for taking a necessary step forward, even as I worry that moves like this may entrench partisan feelings on the AI extinction threat.
As my colleague Alana wrote on Wednesday, Americans of both parties fear AI-driven extinction and favor a halt to AI development. The Trump administration has long kept a finger on the pulse of popular opinion, and it is my enduring hope that the voice of the many will yet drown out the whispers of the few.
The analyses and opinions expressed on AI StopWatch reflect the views of the individual contributors and the sources they cover, and should not be taken as official positions of the Machine Intelligence Research Institute.