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President Trump has been at the forefront of the “what-me-worry?” crowd, refusing to engage on how to balance the risks and rewards of A.I.
The mismatch is striking. On one side, warnings of existential risk, maybe a 10 percent chance of the end of civilization. On the other, government paralysis.
The drumbeat about unpredictable, out-of-control artificial intelligence agents increased dramatically in the past several weeks. Washington not only struggled to respond. It barely could agree on whether there was much of anything to worry about.
It started with A.I. agents that not only escaped their confines, but appeared to conspire among themselves to hide their tracks as they hacked into another firm’s library of artificial intelligence tools.
Then, in a deliberate echo of Albert Einstein’s letter to Franklin D. Roosevelt about the potential power of nuclear weapons, more than 1,300 computer scientists called for the industry to slow down, and for the government to step in.
In recent days, Jacob Coxon, an Anthropic engineer who previously worked for OpenAI, resigned in the most public way, declaring on social media that the two leading A.I. labs were professing deep concern while still speeding toward “superhuman systems that can hack anything, revolutionize any field overnight, and acquire real power and resources.”
On Saturday, Dario Amodei, the chief executive of Anthropic, released a 3,800-word essay calling for a global slowdown of A.I. development, echoing more urgently concerns he had raised in the past. Elon Musk, the billionaire rival in the A.I. race who remains close to President Trump, quickly responded on X: “Dario is right.” Sam Altman, the chief executive of OpenAI, also chimed in with support.
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