GOP rep on AI: ‘Let’s get on top of it’

GOP Rep. Mike Flood (Neb.) said Sunday the federal government should implement artificial intelligence safeguards to prevent the technology from falling into the wrong “hands.”

During an interview on NewsNation’s “The Hill Sunday,” Flood said the leaders of top AI companies should be “answering questions” on the safety of the technology and its risks.

“This shouldn’t be ready, shoot, aim or shoot, ready, aim. It should be, ‘Let’s find out what exactly we’re talking about here.’ If it is as dire as they say, obviously, it warrants action, but we need to get the facts before we rush in and say, ‘We’ve got a solution,’” the Nebraska Republican told host Chris Stirewalt.

“I don’t think you could talk to probably 60 percent of the Senate and 60 percent of the House and when somebody says it’s going to lead to world destruction, well, what is that? Tell us exactly what we’re talking about here,” Flood added.

Lawmakers have expressed concern about the risks of rapidly advancing AI models in recent days, after former Anthropic employee Jacob Coxon joined multiple AI researchers in sounding alarm bells about the technology.

In announcing his resignation from Anthropic on Tuesday, Coxon said the company and OpenAI are “racing straight to self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives.”

Coxon wrote on social platform X , “The people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade.”

In essay he published on Saturday, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei called for slowing the “pace at which we improve the capabilities of AI models” to allow risk prevention measures to “keep up.” OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk concurred with Amodei.

President Trump has generally been receptive to the rapid advancement of AI models as he pushes for the U.S. to win the AI race over China. Trump reiterated his view on Sunday, saying the U.S. is the “most sophisticated country in the world and frankly, I want to keep it that way,”

Trump told reporters in Ireland, “We can put guardrails, and we can do this and that, but I think you have a lot of negative forces that are bringing it up, and they’re bringing up things that won’t happen.”

Flood said Sunday he wants the U.S. to build “massive wealth” through AI like it did at the start of the internet age. But he noted he wants “guardrails” on the increasingly ubiquitous technology, noting a country “like Iran could use these tools to manufacture bombs” to use on American cities.

“If we’re at that level and we’re in this unsafe world right now with countries that wake up every day and want to see us destroyed, if they get their hands on this, what does that mean? I mean, this is bigger than shutting down a cellular network,” he told Stirewalt.

“If this is about building something that’s a weapon of mass destruction, let’s get on top of it.”