The private sector is more than capable of addressing the risks posed by rapidly advancing artificial intelligence, National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett told CNBC on Tuesday.
“I think these are completely solvable problems,” Hassett said on “Squawk Box.”
Hassett’s remarks largely align with President Donald Trump, who went on a social media rampage Monday against AI industry leaders and others who have raised alarms about their own models.
But the message contrasts with a growing number of influential voices, including the heads of several top AI companies, calling for strengthened protections — or even a slowdown in development — around the nascent technology.
“The idea that we’re going to simply allow a kind of, ‘We’ll trust you to take care of this,’ would be shortsighted,” Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said on CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street” later Tuesday morning.
Warner, who spoke over the weekend with Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei and OpenAI chief Sam Altman, said some AI companies’ experimentation on their products “has been sloppy to date.”
“I think we need some guardrails around data centers, kids, around AI agents, some pre-testing in terms of national security,” Warner said.
Responding to Hassett’s remarks, Warner said, “The idea that we’re going to say to the wealthiest companies in the world, ‘Hey, we’re going to trust you guys to do this on your own and have no cross-check,’ I don’t think the American people are going to get much assurance from that.”
Concerns over AI have become a front-burner issue, especially following a recent warning from Anthropic’s Amodei, whose call for an AI slowdown was backed by Altman and SpaceX‘s Elon Musk.
But Trump, in numerous heated Truth Social posts a day earlier, called those concerns a “hoax.”
Trump’s AI-friendly administration argues U.S. dominance over China in the fast-expanding industry is essential.
Warner pushed back Tuesday morning. “I don’t want China to win this, but the idea that [if] you put any guardrails in place [it] will slow innovation is bogus,” he said.
Hassett, however, told CNBC that the government already plays a role that should not be enlarged.
“These are solvable problems, and the private sector is the right place to solve them,” he said. “And it doesn’t mean the government is asleep at the wheel. Not at all. It’s watching closely, using law enforcement when necessary to make sure that the firms are acting responsibly.”
Not all tech CEOs are clamoring for more government intervention. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang on Monday signaled agreement with Trump when he took a phone call from the president live on stage at the All-In Summit in Los Angeles.
The AI alarmists and data center opponents are “playing right into the hands of a lot of people that don’t want to see it happen,” Trump said. “We’re not going to let that happen.”
“You’re right,” Huang replied. “We’re not going to let that happen, sir.”
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, testifying before the House Financial Services Committee on Tuesday, affirmed that “I would just say the president is completely aligned” with Huang.
With the midterm election just seven weeks away, politicians on both sides of the aisle are increasingly speaking up about AI. But Vice President JD Vance did not mention AI or data centers when he spoke to Republican lawmakers behind closed doors Tuesday morning about the midterms, Rep. Ralph Norman, R-S.C., told reporters after the gathering.
— Laura Garrison contributed to this report.
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