‘Can’t tie our own hands’: Presidential candidate warns an AI pause for US means ‘China running with it’

SEABROOK, N.H. – Pausing artificial intelligence development in the U.S. while China continues to advance its own programs would create a risk to Americans, Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy told Fox News. 

“A temporary pause amongst U.S. companies — if China is actually running forward with it — that doesn’t do anything in alleviating the risks of AI,” Ramaswamy said in an exclusive interview. “It exacerbates them because Americans are at an even greater risk instead.”

Elon Musk and other leaders in the tech industry called for a temporary pause on major AI experiments last month, citing potential risks to society. However, others have suggested that pausing development would only hinder the U.S. and enable China to get ahead in the AI race. 

“I do have some concerns with the advancement of AI,” Ramaswamy told Fox News. “In the name of helping humanity, AI presents a lot of other risks to humanity that may be difficult to reverse.”

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Musk has warned that rapid advancements in AI could significantly impact elections, pose civilizational threats to humanity and could blur truth from reality. Eliezer Yudkowsky, a decision theorist at the Machine Intelligence Research Institute, said the Tesla CEO’s warnings aren’t dire enough and that AI could push humanity to extinction. 

On Wednesday, Musk met with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, who has been developing a high-level framework that outlines new regulations for AI.

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But Ramaswamy said keeping a competitive edge over China in AI is crucial.  

“It’s important as a U.S. president not to apply any constraints to the U.S. that China isn’t itself adopting, but to lead diplomatically in a way that we’re able to address those risks together,” he said. “We can’t tie our own hands if China isn’t adopting the same constraints.”

The Chinese Communist Party proposed measures earlier this month requiring Chinese AI developers to include socialist values in their products to avoid regime subversion and disrupting social order. If Chinese AI pulls ahead of the U.S. and becomes the standard across the globe, socialist principles could influence other countries, a panel of AI experts warned the Senate last week.

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Ramaswamy, who founded a multi-billion dollar biotech company, ranks his understanding of AI as high compared to other politicians.

“I have even run a company that used AI to discover and design drugs, even AI in the drug development process,” he said.

Recent AI developments have already impacted the medical and pharmaceutical industries, with one study showing that machines read ultrasounds better than humans. A study also found that AI can predict lung cancer in some patients.

Ramaswamy doesn’t believe AI is America’s greatest threat.

“China represents a much greater risk to the US right now than AI does,” he told Fox News. “We have to be eyes wide open to that fact.”

To hear more of Ramaswamy’s thoughts on AI, click here.