House Speaker Mike Johnson told CNN’s Jake Tapper on Sunday that he is open to many of the suggestions being put forward for how to regulate AI, but the last thing we need is rushed “emergency” legislation driven by “panic.” “These tech leaders, they’re begging for Congress and the president to step in and provide some guardrails,” Tapper said about AI. “Frankly, they seem terrified. Do you think AI as it is right now poses an existential threat? And are you going to heed their request?” “We have to resist Congress jumping in and imposing some sort of emergency moratorium. It’s got to be done right, safely, wisely,” Johnson said. “We need to get them all in a room at the same time and agree on what the guardrails are. That’s the only way to do this. If Congress just races in and does some sort of emergency session to try to regulate A.I., we will lose the race to China, and that is a threat to every single American.” “So we’ve got to have balance. We’ve got to have steady hands at the wheel. I’m one of the ones calling for the summoning of this meeting, and I will be pushing that myself, because it is a top priority. But we don’t need everybody to panic right now.” “I can promise you, no one is going to accuse Congress of ‘racing’ to do something about AI,” CNN’s Jake Tapper quipped. <\/p>\n
REP. MIKE JOHNSON (R-LA): Hey, Jake. Great to be with you. We are heeding their request, and we are also calling upon them to do responsible things. And let me explain that. I have been speaker for almost three years. We started working on this almost immediately after I was handed the gavel. One of the first things I did was put together an A.I. Task Force in the House, a bipartisan group with an equal number of members on both sides of the aisle, that worked deliberately over a long period of time to debate and deliberate and research what the best way there is to go to put guardrails, some safety on — in place to make sure that A.I. doesn’t get out of control. Now, here’s the thing. At the same time, there is an obvious corporate responsibility, that the people who are creating these models have to have to ensure that their products are safe. There was a — I commend to your reading — David Sacks, who is the A.I. czar in the Trump White House in this term, put out a great post last night on X. And he explained, look, the guys that are calling for this are the ones that are pushing the frontier. If they want to slow that down, that’s fine. But we also at the same time have to resist Congress jumping in and imposing some sort of emergency moratorium. It’s got to be done right, safely, wisely. But we — in order to solve that equation, you need a lot of bright minds around the table. So, Jake, here’s what I’m proposing. I think the leaders and the providers of all these platforms, the guys you named and a few others — there’s about seven or eight people who are in charge of this — they need to come together in a meeting with us and sit down and figure out what the right balance is. We cannot put a moratorium on this because China will overlap us, and that’s the challenge. It’s national security balanced with the immediate security of making sure the models are safe. TAPPER: Yes, but they’re calling for that to happen as soon as possible. They’re conveying this urgency. They’re conveying fears. They want a consistent set of rules of the road for everyone. [09:05:02] So, when are you going to invite these moguls, these A.I. experts to Washington? I mean, it sounds to me like they would — they would come tomorrow or Tuesday. JOHNSON: Yes, but, Jake, here’s the problem. I’ve been meeting with all of them individually since I became speaker, I mean, regularly. I’ve visited with all these guys. The problem is, they all have a different prescription on what they say the regulation is supposed to be. The problem is, they’re all competitors. Each one of them wants to maintain an edge over the others. What David Sacks is saying in his post that was just published late last night is that they need to take personal responsibility first. And we need to get them all in a room at the same time and agree on what the guardrails are. That’s the only way to do this. If Congress just races in and does some sort of emergency session to try to regulate A.I., we will lose the race to China, and that is a threat to every single American. So we’ve got to have balance. We’ve got to have steady hands at the wheel. I’m one of the ones calling for the summoning of this meeting, and I will be pushing that myself, because it is a top priority. But we don’t need everybody to panic right now. We need to handle this new technology like we have others in the past and make sure we’re doing everything we can responsibly to also not smother American innovation. We have to do both things simultaneously. TAPPER: I promise you nobody is going to accuse Congress of racing to do anything about A.I. (LAUGHTER) TAPPER: We’ve been covering this for years. JOHNSON: Fair enough. TAPPER: And I just promise you that’s not going to happen. I mean, one of the things that’s so terrifying is, in July, OpenAI technicians were shocked to find out that their A.I. agents, these bots or whatever, were communicating secretly with each other and plotting an attack on a different A.I. platform called Hugging Face. This is why Amodei wrote in his letter — quote — “Left unchecked, A.I. could outrun our ability to understand and control these systems, and so must be pursued very carefully, if at all.” Some of the ideas being floated include a federal kill switch, the creation of a federal A.I. regulatory agency, mandatory government approval of frontier A.I. models before they’re released. Is there any of that you think that you could possibly support? JOHNSON: Maybe all of it. And those are great ideas. But if you compare this to the other big technological advances like nuclear power and nuclear war and all of that, nuclear bombs, it took decades to put together all the oversight and regulatory boards and the international partnerships and all of that. We don’t have that much time here. So there is a sense of urgency about it. We are looking at it carefully, and we have been, and Congress is a deliberative body, Jake. It takes a while to do that. And Congress needs to catch up. But the problem is, I’m telling you again, the guys who are raising the alarms right now all have very different ideas on what the guardrails should be. There’s no consensus among them. And Congress is obviously less qualified than the people who are pushing this frontier to know all the ins and outs of it. So this has to be a partnership with the industry itself, with the corporations that are doing this, and with the policy and lawmakers. And that’s a very complex thing to resolve. If we overstep it, I’m telling you again, Jake, it could be a national security threat for every American. So we have threats in both — both sides of this, and we have got to do this in a very thoughtful, deliberate way, and we have to do it with urgency. And I’m committed to that, as everybody else is. TAPPER: Well, how urgent? I mean, do you want this meeting to take place this week? JOHNSON: I’d do it, yes. I’d do it tomorrow. We have got to summon everybody together. I have talked to the president about this as well. They probably should be summoned together at the White House. And I think we need to go in a big room, close the door, and sort this out. And I will be the one pushing it, forcing it, because I know all these guys individually. Again, I have talked with them. They have expressed their concerns. And I always say to them, you have to do your part, of course. You have a corporate responsibility to make sure your products are safe. And they’re the ones pushing the envelope. And for them to cry out for us to stop it, this is a partnership. They have got to be responsible on their own side.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n