Trump admin GRAPPLES with AI concerns: ‘Advancing so rapidly’

Joining us now, White House National Economic Director Kevin Hassett. Director, welcome back to Fox News Sunday. Good morning. Okay, so let's start here with the warnings from Dario Amidai. He says this, AI brings risks of losing control of AI systems, misuse of AI for cyber attacks and bioterrorism, and serious economic disruption. He goes on to say that they've got to slow the pace and use that time wisely. He said, listen, he's worried in six to 12 months these AI agents that carried out this recent just attack that had no human interaction whatsoever, they can actually take over the internet. You talked earlier this year about maybe something like an FDA approval process, an executive order that would, you know, test AI products before they go out, quote, into the wild. What's the status of that? Right, well, if you look at Dario's letter, it really presents a roadmap for the private sector to get ahead of the curve on this. And while he's saying that we need to slow things down, he's also calling for sort of independent observers to come into the AI companies and to make sure that they're making sure that they're safe. The bottom line is that AI is advancing so rapidly that, you know, the cybersecurity you've got on your computer was invented a few years ago, but AI is accelerating so rapidly that maybe it's going to be able to go through and break the defenses that we have from two or three years ago. But at the same time that's happening, these AI companies are developing new defenses. I think that getting AI to be safe is a solvable problem, and I think that Amitai's letter is a guide to how to do that. So do you think that this is a role for the executive branch, for the legislative branch? I mean, you've got members like Congresswoman Ana Paulina Luna, who's a Republican, saying she thinks there should be things like kill switches. She thinks there should be a special session. There needs to be federal regulation. Right, well, this is something that, you know, the president's team led by Sean Karen Krause and Michael Kratzios are definitely studying the matter. And I think that if you look at the movement that the private sector is making, the fact that Elon and the open AI folks have already supported the actually pretty sensible moves that Dario's advising, I think that that's a good movement forward, a good step forward. Let's get to economic news, and I'll start with the good news. Our Fox News power rankings analysis this week says that President Trump's had a strong economic record in some ways. Just last week, the U.S. added 162,000 jobs, about triple what economists had expected. The unemployment rate was steady at 4.1 percent. The stock market also continues to grow, even as Iran and tariffs drive volatility. But if you look to recent polling, Reuters Ipsos has this. On the U.S. economy, the president's underwater by 33 points, cost of living underwater by 46 points, and inflation in prices underwater by 48 points. So you've got some good data there. When does it start to make a difference in everyday Americans' lives? Well, if you look at the history of elections and economic data, then it's what's in the truth of the data that influences people's votes, not these surveys of what their sentiment are. And if you look at the sentiment surveys, then they tend to be heavily weighted towards Democrats, who are mad about everything right now that we're accomplishing. But the bottom line is, if you look at the same period over the Biden administration, the same beginning of the period that we've just experienced, then Biden inflation was about 10 percent. Inflation all the way up through today, from when Trump took office, is a little bit below 4 percent, 3 point something percent. If you look at inflation three months prior, it was 8.2 percent because of the surge in oil prices, and it was only 0.1 percent over the last three months. So inflation is coming under control. Wheel wages are growing. GDP growth in the third quarter is looking like it's 4.5 percent. And so that's the kind of momentum that usually, when you go into an election, it means that the Republicans win. And don't believe me, there's a guy named Ray Fair at Yale who's been running models about this forever and ever, that says the economic data outperforms sentiment surveys like 100 percent. OK, so let's look at one other analysis that we had, too. When the Democrats were facing this midterm thing in 2022 with President Biden, he was underwater on the economy by 23 points. That's 10 points better than where the president is right now. And Democrats lost nine seats in the midterms there. But your prediction is that somehow Republicans will outlive that curse or historic rate? Right. Or no, your assertion is that that one data item is meaningful in an empirical way. If you look at all of history, the bottom line is that Biden's economy right before that election was truly horrible. We were heading up towards almost close to above 10 to 12 percent inflation. Real wages were dropping by about 3,000. And so then you ask yourself, OK, if that's a reasonable estimate of what people think about the economy, how come now that we have this booming economy, they say that it's worse? The answer is that they're surveying Democrats who hate President Trump. That's all. So therefore, I disregard that number. OK, so let's talk about looking ahead to the rate decision coming from the Fed. The Wall Street Journal editorial board says this. The best way to get real wages rising is for Mr. Trump to give Mr. Warsh, the new Fed chair, the running room he needs to get inflation down to the Fed's 2 percent target. That may start with a quarter point increase in interest rates at next week's federal open market committee meeting, which would signal to markets that the Are you confident that the Fed director has got the independency needs potentially to do that? And how would that land at the White House if there is an increase? Well, 100 percent, President Trump has given Mr. Warsh the runway to do what he thinks is right. He has enormous faith in him. He'll look at the data and he'll get the board to agree to something. And if it's a rate hike that the president will, you know, I'm sure he's not to be super happy about it, but he will defend the independence of Kevin Warsh above all. And I think that if it were me, if I look at the momentum for inflation, that it's basically gone down to almost nothing over the last three months. I'd be wary of a rate hike, especially if you go back and look at the history of the Fed. Then they've hiked rates ahead of an election only a couple of times all the way back to 1913. And so I think if you want an independent Fed, then one one thing the Fed does is it stays out of the way of elections. OK, well, we'll see. We will watch that closely this week. Director, we always appreciate your time. Great to be back. Thank you. Be sure to like and subscribe for all the Fox News latest on YouTube and catch full shows streaming now on Fox one.