House Speaker Mike Johnson said Tuesday the U.S. cannot impose an AI development moratorium without ceding competitive and national-security advantage to China, and that companies can self-regulate. Distinct from the already-covered Trump slowdown brief.
U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson said Tuesday there cannot be a moratorium on artificial intelligence development without losing the competitive edge to China, and that AI companies can regulate themselves, Reuters reported from Washington.
“They can self-regulate. They don’t need the government to tell them to slow it down. If they want to slow it down, they should,” Johnson told reporters. “We cannot have a moratorium on the development of AI, Ok? Because then we will lose our edge to China, and that has serious national security implications for every American family.”
Johnson said he expects AI to come up when President Donald Trump meets Chinese President Xi Jinping in Washington later this month, and he rejected the idea of a transnational agency to regulate AI. He said he spoke with Trump Monday night and that they are summoning executives of major AI providers to the White House within the next week.
Guardrails, he said, should be balanced and thoughtful. “I think you need independent auditors. I think you need transparency from the people who are developing this. I think there’s some really important ideas that can be guardrails,” Johnson said, according to Reuters.
This is a Capitol Hill leadership signal against a development pause. It is not a rewrite of AI Tech Daily’s existing coverage of Trump dismissing industry slowdown calls; that presidential brief stands on its own.