Sen. Ted Cruz said bipartisan legislation is needed to protect the world from the “catastrophic risks” of artificial intelligence.
The Texas Republican’s Wednesday comments on ABC’s “The View” come as lawmakers in both parties call for more urgent attention to AI safety regulations after a researcher who quit Anthropic on Tuesday said tech giants are “gambling with our lives.”
“I read that whole tweet thread that that developer put out. It was highly concerning,” Cruz said in the interview.
He added, “It reminded me, last year I had Elon Musk on my podcast … and one of the questions I asked him, I said, ‘OK, what are the odds that AI destroys humanity?’ And he looked at me and said, ‘10-20%,’ and I’m like, ‘holy crap.’”
As the chair of the Senate Commerce Committee, Cruz holds significant influence over the fate of AI legislation.
Cruz worked with Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) last year to pass the bipartisan Take it Down Act, which criminalized nonconsensual intimate imagery, including deepfakes and revenge porn created by AI. Cruz called for more legislation on Wednesday to guard against the “catastrophic risks” of artificial intelligence.
Those risks, which he said include biological and nuclear threats, should require government supervision and approval before they can be implemented. Cruz said he is currently working with Klobuchar and Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) to begin to address those dangers through bipartisan legislation.
“This is scary stuff, but we’re also not going to be able to stick our head in the sand and pretend technology isn’t happening. So we’ve got to put some guardrails on it,” he said.
Cruz said the likelihood of such legislation becoming law was “not clear.”
“Amy and John are negotiating right now. It is possible to move bipartisan legislation … but it ain’t easy.”
Despite his concerns about the risks of AI, he said the U.S. needs to lead the world in the technology’s development.
“One of the real challenges is [that] China is going full speed ahead, and whatever we do here, China is not going to stop,” Cruz said. “If there are going to be killer robots, I would rather they be American killer robots, rather than Chinese killer robots.”
In a social media post highlighting his remarks on the show, Cruz added: “If China leads the world in AI, the whole world is in trouble.”
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