US President Donald Trump surrounded himself with some of the most influential and wealthy technology executives at the White House on Tuesday, amid growing concern about artificial intelligence.
American voters have grown increasingly uneasy over AI’s potential impact on the labour market, the environmental effects of data centres, multiple AI-induced cyber security incidents and the regulation of the advanced technology.
Yet for several weeks now, Mr Trump dismissed those concerns as “a hoax”. On Tuesday, while unveiling a new AI-driven government website, he again rejected calls for more regulations related to AI development.
Several hours after introducing the site, Mr Trump hosted a lunch with dozens of technology and AI executives.
Mr Trump later told reporters that he was thinking about creating a 10-person committee to oversee the AI sector. He said the tech executives signed an agreement that is "morally binding," without providing details.
He also signed an executive order in line with his call for AI to be rebranded to “super intelligence.” Under the executive order, all US government documents would refer to “super intelligence” instead of AI.
A seating chart showed that Palantir's Alex Karp, AMD's Lisa Su, Microsoft's Satya Nadella, Amazon's Jeff Bezos, Meta's Mark Zuckerberg, Anthropic's Dario Amodei, Nvidia's Jensen Huang and Google's Sundar Pichai were among those in attendance.
Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg spoke with reporters about the meeting and morally binding AI agreement.
"I think that these are good steps forward," he said. "The idea isn't that this is the only thing that we will ever do."
Polling poorly
Weeks before crucial midterm elections, a poll published on Tuesday showed growing support for Democrats, particularly for candidates pushing for more AI regulation.
About 73 per cent of voters opposed the building of AI data centres in their community, the Quinnipiac University survey found. The issue was pushing more voters to Democratic candidates, who are often viewed as being more sympathetic to data centre opposition and AI regulation.
The poll indicated that 51 per cent of voters preferred to see the Democratic Party win control of the US House of Representatives, versus 39 per cent who preferred the Republican Party retaining control of that chamber.
“How concerned are voters about AI's potential to do harm? So concerned that nearly eight out of 10 favour safety over the race to dominate development of AI,” said Quinnipiac polling analyst Tim Malloy.
“Voters say they would be more likely to vote for candidates who agree with that course,” he added.
Other aspects of Quinnipiac’s poll provide little solace for the Republican Party, with voters expressing more confidence in Democrats on issues related to the economy, international conflicts, health care and government corruption.
“From the economy, to international conflicts, to AI, independent voters are siding with Democrats,” Mr Malloy said.
