Dario Amodei published his plan yesterday. Today Washington answered. Short version: go ahead, but leave us out of it.
Trump
Asked about the calls to slow down, the president brushed them off. «Whoever wins with AI wins», he said, and he wants to keep the lead over China. On the warnings coming out of the industry: «I think you have a lot of negative forces that are bringing it up … shouldn’t be bringing it up.» Kevin Hassett, director of the White House economic council, said meetings are planned for this week.
Speaker Johnson
Mike Johnson told CNN that Congress will not take the lead. Lawmakers should «resist Congress jumping in and imposing some sort of emergency moratorium». The companies are the ones on the hook: they have «a corporate responsibility to make sure your products are safe». Congress, he added, is less qualified than the people inside the labs. What he offers instead is a meeting with Trump, members of Congress and the heads of the AI companies. Not a bill. He mentions China too.
Worth noting, because House Democrats spent Thursday demanding he cancel the recess and pass safeguards.
David Sacks
The sharpest response came from David Sacks, who chairs PCAST. His line of the day: «The easiest way not to build superintelligence is for you to agree not to build it.» Anthropic and OpenAI can slow down whenever they like, and they need nobody’s permission to do it.
What he rejects is the price tag. No antitrust waiver letting the labs coordinate on safety, which to him reads as a cartel. No approval regime replacing product liability. Companies that enable cyberattacks get sued, and that is incentive enough. He also questions how independent METR really is, the very evaluator Anthropic wants to bring in house, pointing at ties to investors and staff.
What about the other side?
Different tone, same absence of legislation. Speaking with Hakeem Jeffries at a Democratic fundraiser, Obama said his party has to make AI one of its central agendas and needs «a very clear plan». «This is something that is moving very fast in private hands, and if we don’t get on top of it, I think can be dangerous.» And also: «I genuinely think it’s going to accelerate, for example, drug development in ways that can help us cure diseases.» He wants a framework for that conversation once Democrats have the House back. Next year at the earliest.
Why this matters to me
Amodei’s plan has three tiers, and tiers two and three depend on politics. Tier one, outside evaluators sitting inside the building, Anthropic is doing on its own. Tier two needs an antitrust carve-out at minimum, and Sacks just took that off the table.
The industry keeps nodding along. After Altman and Musk, Demis Hassabis lined up behind Amodei this weekend. That changes none of the arithmetic. Which leaves the uncomfortable reading Sacks himself hands you: anyone who wants to brake can brake. Everything past that is a request for rules nobody in town feels like writing.
Sources:
- ABC News: Trump downplays the need to check AI development
- Axios: Johnson calls for AI solutions but says Congress won’t take the lead
- TNW: Trump’s former AI czar tells Anthropic and OpenAI to slow down
- TechCrunch: Obama urges Democrats to have a ‘clear plan’ for AI safeguards
- The Decoder: Altman, Musk, and Hassabis back Amodei’s call