The Senate Finance Committee examines the nomination of Scott Bessent for secretary of the treasury, January 16, 2025 – Washington DC. Credit: Maxim Elramsisy via Shutterstock US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has criticised AI leaders who warn of disaster but offer no fixes. He made the remarks in an interview with Axios published on Saturday. “This alarmism without solutions by some of the AI community, that’s not leadership,” Bessent said, as Bloomberg reported. In September, Anthropic’s Dario Amodei, OpenAI’s Sam Altman and xAI’s Elon Musk called for the industry to slow work on its most advanced models.
Bill Gates warned AI could cause a billion deaths. Bessent said the job of managing those risks belongs to the companies. “It is the people at the labs who have to accept responsibility, and I agree with that,” he said. Asked about executives calling for regulation, he replied: “Well, then they should slow down.” Racing China, but talking too Bessent echoed Donald Trump, who has called AI doom warnings a hoax and rejected new federal rules. “We cannot lose our lead to the Chinese,” Bessent said. He also warned that Chinese models can be “80%, 90% as powerful” as US ones, but come without guardrails.
Even so, the US plans to propose a system for warning China about serious AI incidents, Axios reported. The aim is to help both governments act before a problem spreads. Bessent discussed AI with Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng in New York in September. They covered risks such as rogue AI agents and the use of AI by non-state groups for cyber or biological attacks.
That openness has limits. Trump said last week he does not want an AI safety deal with China.
