Obama Bashes Trump for Not Pushing ‘Serious Regulatory Framework’ on AI: ‘That’s Not How We Treat Airlines or Drug Companies!’

Former President Barack Obama said President Donald Trump has it all wrong: artificial intelligence must be regulated by the government.

The ex-commander-in-chief went off on Trump’s laissez faire approach to AI during a Friday interview at Colgate University, claiming while he believed it is “remarkable technology,” AI could go off the rails and cause serious “mischief,” if politicians don’t put guardrails in place.

“[The] government has to be regulating this!” Obama made clear. “I heard one of Donald Trump’s main advisers on this make the argument that, ‘The market will take care of i. These companies will solve the safety issues because they have every incentive to do so — if it turns out to be dangerous, people will just sue them and they’re worried about financial liability.’ That’s not how we treat airlines! Or drug companies, or food companies.”

Obama went on, saying AI poses an existential threat to humanity if it gets in the hands of “bad humans.” He said the same goes for if models continue to self-improve and find they don’t need to listen to humans anymore — a problem many AI experts have been warning against recently. Obama said he doesn’t believe Trump is willing or able to put rules in place to prevent things from going awry.

“The challenge we have is that, obviously, we have a president currently that has said that’s for losers,” Obama said. “So we’ve got a gap of at least a couple of years where things are moving really fast and we have an administration that is not capable of or willing to — I would argue both — putting together a serious regulatory framework.”

All of this comes a week after Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei warned leading AI companies must “slow down” the pace of innovation before things go off the rails. Amodei said if AI progresses too fast, it could lead to a  “misalignment” with humans that risks “catastrophic damage.” His warning was quickly endorsed by Elon Musk and OpenAI boss Sam Altman — two guys who rarely agree on anything publicly.

Their sobering posts added to the increasing calls for the government to regulate AI.

But Trump dismissed the idea immediately, saying fears of an AI doomsday scenario are nothing more than a “HOAX.” He later dubbed himself the “hoax buster,” while also vowing progress “will not be stopped” — especially since the U.S. is battling China for AI supremacy.

Obama believes that’s a big mistake.

Watch above.

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