Intelligence Official Tells Fox’ Bret Baier AI Is ‘A Risk We Have To Take On’

Days after an artificial intelligence researcher warned the tech could “kill us all” within a decade, the nation’s top intelligence official said the United States must win the AI race.

Speaking Friday with Fox News’ Bret Baier, Director of National Intelligence Jay Clayton compared artificial intelligence to nuclear power and said America must be first in the race to use AI in matters of national security:

I think this is a race that we need to win. And the reason I think that, Bret, is if you talk to people who have seen what these models can do and are projecting what they will be able to do in the future, the power is immense.

And let’s go back in time. Nuclear.

You know, would we have made a grave mistake if we did not develop nuclear technology?

Not just civilian nuclear technology but military nuclear technology? Of course we would have.

We had to develop it because people around the world were going to develop it as well.

I believe in the United States of America. I believe that if we are the strongest country in the world, the world will be a much better place. And I look at ai, frontier models in the very same framework.

Baier then asked Clayton, who was confirmed as the DNI by the Senate in July after a contentious hearing, what “level of confidence” he had that the still-evolving tech could be contained if it got out of hand.

New: The Mediaite One-Sheet "Newsletter of Newsletters"
Your daily summary and analysis of what the many, many media newsletters are saying and reporting. Subscribe now!