Congress
Mike Johnson backs voluntary regulation to ‘calm the nerves’ on AI safety
Speaker Mike Johnson called Tuesday for more “oversight” and “transparency” of the artificial intelligence industry —including “external auditing” — while expressing a preference that those steps would be taken voluntarily by leading AI firms.
Johnson made the comments on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” just hours before he is expected to meet at the White House with President Donald Trump and top AI executives.
“There’s corporate responsibility here. Of course these folks have to provide safe products,” Johnson said. “But I think a little oversight, a little transparency, a little external auditing of what’s going on would calm the nerves of a lot of people.”
It’s a more measured tone than Johnson struck earlier this month, when he joined Trump in playing down the warnings made by some AI insiders of existential threats to humanity and emphasizing the need to beat China in the race to superintelligent models.
He reaffirmed Tuesday his belief the U.S. needs to strike the “right balance” between staying competitive globally and keeping the technology safe.
“I have resisted the siren song to jump in and do these blanket moratoriums and all of this, you know, hyperregulation, because we cannot lose our edge to China,” Johnson said. “I think we’ve got to make sure we do this well. We need to keep America ahead in this, you know, transformational technology, but also do it in a safe way.”
Several of the prominent executives who have called for a voluntary slowdown in AI development, including Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, will be at the meeting. Also attending is Greg Brockman, president of OpenAI, which said Monday it was canceling the release of its latest model due to safety concerns.
Johnson said Tuesday he was counting on the executives, not the government, to take the lead, saying of the implementation of guardrails, “I hope it’s voluntary.”
“We’ll find out what comes out of the meeting today,” he said. “I think that that’s where they’re headed. I think they see the handwriting on the wall, and I think they want to ensure investors, consumers, the American public that they’re going to do this in a very safe way. And that will, I think, put us in the right place.”