Todd Blanche claims AI fears are Dem ploy to influence the midterms

WASHINGTON — Attorney General Todd Blanche claimed Tuesday that fears about artificial intelligence morphing into a “Terminator”-style takeover of humanity are “nothing but an effort to influence the midterms.”Blanche made the contention during an unusual press briefing in the Rose Garden as he served as the latest substitute press secretary following Karoline Leavitt’s departure last month.“The president calls it a hoax, the way this has come around today and not three weeks ago,” Blanche said as reporters dripped with sweat in the blazing late-summer sun.“I was watching the news today.Every Democrat senator suddenly races to a microphone to talk about AI after being eerily silent for months and months and months.”“To talk about the timing of this as being nothing but an effort to influence the midterms, I shouldn’t have to say that out loud,” he added.“Of course that’s what it is.

And that shouldn’t be what drives the decisions that we’re making around AI.We can’t lose the AI race to China.”Fear about AI vaulted into public discourse last Tuesday when Jacob Coxon, a former Anthropic employee, wrote on X that “the people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade.”Coxon claims that there “will soon be superhuman systems that can hack anything, revolutionize any field overnight, and acquire real power and resources.”The rapid recirculation of Coxon’s warnings by Democratic officials spurred speculation by Republicans that his disclosure was coordinated with politically connected organizations interested in regulating AI.Blanche told reporters: “I do not think it’s the job of the Department of Justice to regulate.

We’re prosecutors, not regulators.So we’re not going to try to regulate AI.”“There’s a lot of criminal laws,” he said.

“And so, if anybody associated with AI violates criminal law, we’ll investigate that.We already have.

There’s plenty of cases in...