Utah Gov. Spencer Cox released a statement Monday calling for federal action on AI safety and accountability.
“We want to accelerate human-enhancing AI that expands our capabilities and access to knowledge, tools, and opportunities, and enables problem-solving at unprecedented scale in healthcare, education, science, energy, national security, and many other areas,” Cox said. “But AI must be human-guided and human-controlled in order to reap the benefits to humanity.”
Cox urged Congress to establish a “federal framework” that would require organizations developing powerful AI tools to report “serious safety incidents,” protect anyone raising “credible safety concerns,” evaluate the systems throughout the development process and bar the sale of “powerful AI chips and other enabling infrastructure” to China.
“This framework should set a national floor — not a ceiling — focusing strictly on frontier AI without preempting broader state authority,” Cox said, inviting other state leaders to “join Utah in embracing our Pro human AI values” and creating a national approach to AI implementation.
“AI must be human-guided and human-controlled in order to reap the benefits to humanity.”
— Utah Gov. Spencer Cox
“Let us build the most advanced artificial intelligence in the world, and ensure that as its capabilities grow, it remains firmly in service of humanity.”
What industry leaders are saying about AI regulation
Cox’s statement follows a weekend of debate over possible consequences of rapid AI development.
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei posted an essay Saturday that stressed the need for a collective slowdown in AI innovation. Amodei said that “like many technologies before it, AI brings risks, and because it is such a powerful technology, these risks are serious.”
Amodei said he has “become convinced that fully addressing the risks requires even more prudence — not just investing in risk prevention, but pacing the rate of capabilities advancement so that risk prevention has time to keep up.”
“We must slow the pace at which we improve the capabilities of AI models,” he continued. “Progress will still seem fast, and we must make wise use of the time we gain.”
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman agreed with Amodei in a post on X.
“The world deserves confidence that American companies developing increasingly capable AI will act responsibly, especially as the trajectory of progress has steepened,” Altman said. “Every frontier lab must deliver on this, and there is no reason any of us should come to work if we cannot.”
Altman said he “welcome(s) a federal framework” that established safety guidelines for frontier AI, but “do(es) not believe we need to wait for an anti-trust exemption or legislation to begin the work of providing this confidence.”
In a later post, Altman explained that AI progress “could go very badly” if creators lost control of the technology or if power is disproportionately concentrated in one person or company.
Avoiding these consequences, he said, “requires walking a narrow middle path.”
Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, reposted Amodei’s essay and simply added, “Dario is right.”
Demis Hassabis, CEO of Google DeepMind, said that Dario’s essay “points towards the right path forward.”
“The details need working through, but the direction is correct for meeting this critical moment,” Hassabis said in a post on X.
President Trump says more regulation on AI is not needed
President Donald Trump also joined the discussion via social media.
“The only control or ‘guardrails’ that AI needs is a STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT, and the U.S.A. has that, in spades!” Trump said in a post on Truth Social. “The Trump Administration has stopped AI ‘people’ from doing bad, or potentially bad, ‘things,’ like Dario (Anthropic!), who is now pretending to be a ‘perfect little angel’ — and we will continue to do so! We already have tremendous CRIMINAL and REGULATORY power over these companies!”
“There is a SICK conspiracy going on against AI and Data Centers, and the only one that is happy about it is China. WHOEVER WINS AI, WINS! We are leading China, and all others, and will continue to do so. Conspiracy Theorists, Treasonists, Traitors, and Leakers, BEWARE!”