Donald Trump is right: ‘Whoever wins AI, wins’ — no pause!

As a variety of pundits from across the political spectrum make clear they desperately want to regulate AI, President Trump is holding the line. He announced the following yesterday:

“The only control or ‘guardrails’ that AI needs is a STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT, and the U.S.A. has that, in spades! The Trump Administration has stopped AI ‘people’ from doing bad, or potentially bad, ‘things,’ like Dario (Anthropic!), who is now pretending to be a ‘perfect little angel’ – and we will continue to do so! We already have tremendous CRIMINAL and REGULATORY power over these companies! There is a SICK conspiracy going on against AI and Data Centers, and the only one that is happy about it is China. WHOEVER WINS AI, WINS! We are leading China, and all others, and will continue to do so. Conspiracy Theorists, Treasonists, Traitors, and Leakers, BEWARE! Thank you for your attention to this matter! President DONALD J. TRUMP”

Vice President Vance echoed those comments.

On the other side, Democrats strongly believe more regulation is necessary — even existential. Here was Sen. Jon Ossoff .

That ex-Anthropic whistleblower he mentioned, Jacob Coxon, is joining forces with Bernie Sanders, and also Steve Bannon apparently. They will appear together at an ostensibly “pro human” AI event.

And already, there are huge efforts underway to guilt Trump into going along. I saw reports yesterday that advisers in the White House are urging Trump to address the nation and promise some new wave of AI legislation. OpenAI’s Sam Altman is making his appeal based on Trump’s love of winning prizes, and says if Trump and Xi Jinping come together to safeguard AI, they should win the Nobel Peace Prize.

Now this all sounds good in theory. Who is against sensible regulation to make sure AI superintelligence doesn’t pose a threat to humanity?

In theory, no one. But when we get more specific than that, what Anthropic is asking for doesn’t really make sense: i.e., putting in limitations so these so-called frontier models have to advance slowly. A regulation to prevent swift advancement actually benefits whichever company is already winning, by making it impossible for some other AI competitor to catch up. That’s not fair — it’s regulatory capture, and it’s something that happens all the time, despite Rahm Emanuel’s contention that he’s unfamiliar with CEOs begging for regulation.

The dominant market player is often interested in regulation! It happens all the time! They want to kneecap their competitors and remain in their position of dominance! That’s what matters most to Anthropic, believe you me.

So what’s the remedy? Well, as former FTC commissioner Lina Khan points out, there are already laws on the books to punish companies from releasing defective products out onto the market. I never ever ever ever ever agree with Lina Khan, and I think she has a broad conception of consumer harm that ends up punishing large companies for making products that their consumers actually do want. But in this case she’s raising a valid point: Harm to the consumer is already the point of antitrust law, and if any AI company is flouting that, there can already be consequences. It’s perfectly fine to enforce that.

And that’s basically what Trump was saying: Millions of Americans chose Trump to be their president in this moment because they trust his judgment. He seems to understand that we need to let AI companies compete with one another to offer useful new models, and that any company that does something hostile or intrinsically evil can face the necessary consequences. So based on that, I would recommend the AI doomers should chill out.

Robby Soave is co-host of The Hill’s commentary show “Rising” and a senior editor for Reason Magazine. This column is an edited transcription of his daily commentary.