OXON HILL, Md.—Tech companies have done a “horrendous” job pitching the benefits of artificial intelligence to the American people, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Thursday.
“The SI, the large language labs that are creating it, and the companies and the folks building the data centers have done a horrendous, terrible job explaining the value proposition to the American people,” Bessent said at The Heritage Foundation’s Forum conference.
He referred to AI as “super intelligence,” a term coined by President Donald Trump to describe the technology.
The secretary stressed the importance of maintaining U.S. dominance in AI, saying that development “cannot slow down.” Strong American models are the best protection against the rise of Chinese artificial intelligence models, which lack safety guardrails, he said.
American models will “put a shield around our businesses, around our personal finances around everything,” he said.
Bessent acknowledged that all technological change can cause uncertainty, but he expressed confidence that artificial intelligence will create, not slash, jobs.
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“Twenty-five percent of the jobs in America right now did not exist in the year 2000,” he said, noting that AI has not yet caused mass job losses as many people fear.
“So far, companies that use [AI] are hiring more people,” he said. “People who know how to use SI are getting bigger pay raises.”
The secretary warned about the security risks of Chinese models.
“The Chinese, like with everything, are copying what we do, there’s the scientific word distillation, and industrial scale distillation,” he said.
“Chinese models are very cheap. Another thing the Chinese are very good at, and their models are dangerous because they don’t have guardrails on them,” he continued.
Bessent predicted that if a big AI-related incident happens somewhere around the world, Chinese technology will be to blame.
“I don’t know who here saw the refrigerators in 150 grocery stores in France that got turned off,” he said. “That was a Chinese model. Probably the worst of all worlds.”
Bessent laughed at anyone who thinks Trump is a lame duck after Democrats won control of the House and Senate in the midterms.
“I couldn’t be more optimistic on the American economy,” he said.
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