EU to Trump: We will keep pushing for global AI safety rules
The European Commission will continue to seek an international agreement on AI security, despite U.S. resistance, EU tech chief Henna Virkkunen said Tuesday.
“The U.S. has been very public saying they don’t want to have international regulation … because they have concerns that it’s hindering innovation,β Virkkunen said on the stage of the RAID Conference in Brussels in response to questions by POLITICO.
U.S. President Donald Trump has brushed away concerns about AI existential risks as a “hoax,” and declared his opposition to global regulations. The EU takes a different view, having offered its support for last week’s initiative for an international safety body to monitor AI led by Finland and Norway, and signed by 20 other countries.
“We have a different approach because we think that, if you are regulating in a pro-innovation manner, it’s also a good basis for innovation that people have trust in those technologies,” said Virkkunen, the EU Commissioner responsible for technology.
She praised the EUβs landmark 2024 AI Act as a strong regulatory basis for tackling challenges posed by AI bots.
Calls to slow down technological development and strengthen international governance have grown as reports of AI agents going rogue come to light. On Tuesday, OpenAI reportedly said it would not release its latest model out of safety concerns, while rival Anthropic will note AI’s “risk to humanity” in its upcoming IPO documents.
“This summer, we have seen AI agents act in a ways we maybe never thought possible,” Virkkunen noted. “Agents escaping their environment, agents inserting malicious code and agents using deception on humans.”
The Finnish-born European Commissioner told the audience that discussions are already taking place in international forums such as the G7, because “people have serious security concerns, because there are no international rules about the safety and security.”
“The European Union will continue to promote this internationally. We should have agreements about the safety and security of AI. At the same time, we continue to enforce our rules,” she said, also calling for greater cooperation in the meantime among national AI safety organizations.
