Utah governor calls on Congress to create 'framework' for AI safety

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Utah Gov. Spencer Cox called on Congress to establish guardrails for developing advanced artificial intelligence models.
His open letter follows several industry leaders who have called for a slowdown in development.
President Donald Trump said there's a "SICK conspiracy" against AI and data centers.

SALT LAKE CITY — Gov. Spencer Cox called on the United States Congress to establish guardrails for developing advanced artificial intelligence models Monday after a chorus of voices warned over the weekend of potentially existential risks associated with the technology.

The governor said lawmakers should create a framework for AI, including mandatory reporting of safety incidents, protection for employees who raise concerns, independent evaluations of cutting-edge models and for the U.S. to block the sale of necessary components to China.

"America should lead the world in developing artificial intelligence, and that leadership must keep people firmly in control," Cox said on social media. "I'm calling on Congress to establish a consistent national framework for the development of frontier AI. ... We can build the world's most advanced AI here in America while ensuring it remains firmly in service of humanity."

In an open letter, Cox also urged top AI labs to "ensure model capability does not outpace controllability" and called on leaders in other states to promote "pro-human AI," as the initiative he launched last year focused on harnessing technology's ability to solve real problems while minimizing harms.

Cox referenced recent unsanctioned cyberattacks against the machine learning platform Hugging Face conducted by AI agents in an interview with CBS' "Face the Nation" on Sunday, during which he called out Congress' lack of action.

"This is a very important moment for all of us. We've seen the reports. We know what's possible," he said. "The Hugging Face incident ... should be very concerning to everyone, and the people that know the most about this are the most concerned right now. And I think that means that Congress actually should get together and at least have a conversation. I'm embarrassed by the response from Congress to just about everything in our country right now."

Cox said he's not calling for a moratorium or for "shutting things down," but said he wants industry and government to work together to ensure AI safety.

"Government doesn't get this right often either," he said, "but we should be at the table working together."

Concern about the risks of artificial intelligence has continued to bubble up since the Hugging Face incident and reached a new high last week when former Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon shared an alarming series of posts about how AI developers view the technology last week.

"The people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade," he wrote on social media.

Several top AI executives — Dario Amodei of Anthropic, Sam Altman of OpenAI, Elon Musk of SpaceX and Demis Hassabis of Google DeepMind — have called for a global slowdown in the development of artificial intelligence.

Cox's calls for action on AI put him somewhat at odds with the de facto leader of his party, President Donald Trump, who said Monday that the U.S. has sufficient guardrails to check AI and that concerns about the technology will only help adversaries like China in the race to develop it.

"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 president wrote on social media. "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."

Administration officials have said AI companies should be responsible for ensuring the safety of the technology they're developing. Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-South Dakota, said Monday he's open to pursuing "light touch" regulation of AI, and House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-Louisiana, said he's meeting with AI executives "soon." The speaker has previously said that companies are primarily responsible for safety.

The top Democrat in the House, Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, is taking a more aggressive stance, saying AI risks require "decisive congressional action immediately."

The Key Takeaways for this article were generated with the assistance of large language models and reviewed by our editorial team. The article, itself, is solely human-written.