The race for artificial intelligence supremacy has pitted Silicon Valley bigwigs against Washington policymakers and Chinese competitors. President Donald Trump has taken a deregulatory approach to AI development, at times flying in the face of criticisms advocating improved safety infrastructure, an argument that the administration’s leading technology advisor has equated to a willful abandonment of the race for AI dominance.
The so-called AI doomer mindset—a viewpoint that unconstrained AI will eventually amount to a net negative for humanity, potentially even causing societal collapse—amounts to a “self-inflicted injury” on behalf of the U.S., according to David Sacks, a longtime technology investor whom Trump installed as his AI and crypto czar.
“If we have 1,200 different AI laws in the states, you know, clamping down on innovation, I worry that we could lose the AI race,” Sacks told Benioff.
“It’s not a one time, it’s a first time,” said Sacks, who moved from California to Texas last month. “And if they get away with it, there’ll be a second time and a third time. And this will be the beginning of something new and different in this country.”
