US President Donald Trump set out his position on AI regulation on CBS’s 60 Minutes, broadcast on Sunday 8 November. The interview was recorded at the White House on Friday. It was Trump’s first sit-down interview since the Republicans lost both the House of Representatives and the Senate in the midterm elections.

Interviewer Ross Douthat asked whether Trump would work with the Democrats on AI safety. Trump said he would. Guardrails are limits placed on the development and use of AI.

‘I don’t mind guardrails. But I don’t wanna put us in a deep second position. We’re leading number one. And China has no guardrails, by the way,’ Trump said. In China, he said, whatever President Xi Jinping says goes.

Trump says the risks are manageable

Douthat pointed to AI industry leaders who put the chance of AI destroying humanity at, for example, 10 per cent. Trump played down the fear: ‘I think that the risk is not nearly as real as it-- as they talk. And I think the risk can be managed.’

He gave competition with China as his reason. If the US does not have AI, China will, and the US will then be in an incredibly bad position. Everything, he said, is between the US and China; there is no one else.

Business news site CFO Dive reported that Trump did not say which safeguards he would support or outline a regulatory framework. Reuters noted that Trump has previously wanted technology companies to police themselves and said it is unclear how much regulation he will now accept. As recently as 15 September, Trump called warnings about AI’s dangers a hoax on Truth Social, CFO Dive reported.

AI regulation featured prominently in the election campaigns, CFO Dive said, and in some races candidates talked about data centre construction, electricity prices and the effects on jobs. Morningstar analyst Brian Colello wrote that the previous week’s fall in AI stocks such as Nvidia had been attributed mainly to the Democrats’ victory and increased regulatory risk.

Claim of threat against an AI executive

The Verge reported that Trump said in the interview that the Justice Department manages the risk. He said the administration was told that an executive at a major AI company had done something bad with AI. ‘We called them very strongly and said, “Get ready to go to jail. Please give your wife a kiss good night.”’

Trump did not name the person or the company. He said the executive then changed course completely. The claim is Trump’s own and unspecified. The passage is missing from the transcript CBS published online, so the information rests on The Verge’s report.