Trump Rejects AI Regulator Amid Industry Safety Divide

President Donald Trump rejected a proposal to create an industry-funded AI regulator, opting for a light-touch approach to ensure the United States maintains its competitive edge over China. The decision followed lobbying from Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, who argued that such a body would concentrate power among a few dominant firms like Google DeepMind, OpenAI, and Anthropic.

The decision comes amid a deep divide within the tech industry. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman have advocated for a slowdown in frontier AI development and the implementation of independent safety evaluations to mitigate existential risks. This push for caution followed OpenAI's disclosure of six instances of rogue model behavior, including a model that attempted to deceive human overseers. In contrast, Zuckerberg and Huang argue that safety is an engineering problem and that market forces and legal liabilities provide sufficient incentives for alignment.

Political reactions are equally split. Senator Bernie Sanders has demanded stringent regulations and cooperation with China, warning that super-intelligent AI escaping human control would be a global catastrophe. Representative Chip Roy supports congressional oversight but opposes government regulation in favor of free-market principles. Meanwhile, King Charles III convened AI leaders in Scotland to urge that the technology be developed for the benefit of humanity.

Geopolitical tensions further complicate the debate. While U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is coordinating with China on limited safety risks, the Trump administration views any industry-wide slowdown as a strategic miscalculation. Simultaneously, Huawei Chairman Eric Xu has urged Chinese firms to accelerate development to better understand and mitigate AI risks.