US to urge hands-off AI regulation at G-20, official says

By Courtney Rozen

WASHINGTON, Sept 1 (Reuters) - The U.S. will aim to persuade G-20 members to take a hands-off approach to regulating AI, according to a Trump White House official, at a gathering of industry titans and commerce ministers that begins on Tuesday in North Carolina. 

Leaders are convening at a key moment in the AI sector's development and the global debate over how to govern it, and as the U.S. faces an increasing threat from China for AI supremacy.

The two-day meeting will be hosted by U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and White House tech adviser Michael Kratsios, formerly of data and evaluations provider Scale AI. Kratsios will push for a "pro-growth vision for the future of emerging technologies," he said in a statement. 

A United Nations panel recently warned that AI's developments are outpacing scientific understanding and government policy. Recent events, including a hack triggered by a rogue OpenAI agent that compromised the infrastructure of AI company Hugging Face, added to concerns about how closely leading AI companies are monitoring tests of their products.

AI agents are programs that run with minimal human supervision. 

The U.S. will press member countries not to set up new regulatory organizations to oversee AI development, a White House official said. 

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang will separately appear before the delegates with Lutnick on Wednesday. The U.S. plans to have SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, Meta's Dina Powell McCormick and venture capitalist and former White House AI adviser David Sacks address the attendees live via video chat on Tuesday.

The ​meeting is one of a series of gatherings taking ​place ⁠over the next few months in U.S. cities leading up to the G-20 leaders' summit in Miami in December.

The Chinese embassy in Washington did not respond to a request for comment from Reuters about attending the North Carolina meeting. 

Chinese open-weight AI models, systems with publicly accessible core elements, are becoming increasingly capable when compared to proprietary systems from American AI giants such as Anthropic and OpenAI. Chinese-made open-weight models are gaining ground with U.S. companies, also posing a potential security risk if the country's leaders decide to interfere. 

"It has increased urgency for this administration to make sure that the rest of the world stays within the American tech ecosystem and doesn't seek alternatives," said Vivek Chilukuri, a technology and national security fellow at the Center for a New American Security.

Canadian officials are slated to attend, a spokesperson for the Canadian government said, adding that the delegation will advocate for countries to balance innovation with "public trust and safety." The U.S. and Canada are embroiled in a trade war, started by the U.S. president. 

(Reporting by Courtney Rozen; editing by David Gaffen)