A Republican lawmaker is reportedly breaking ranks with President Donald Trump, calling for tougher oversight of artificial intelligence and warning that Americans deserve a seat at the table as the technology reshapes daily life.
Texas Rep. Chip Roy made his case at the Pro-Human Assembly, a conference on artificial intelligence organized by the Future of Life Institute, arguing for a human-led approach to AI development. “We have to sit in committees and bring people in to have discussions about how we’re going to structure our lives and build a human-first environment,” Roy said. “We, the people, have to decide how we want to structure our lives.”
Roy didn’t hold back when speaking with the Daily Caller, laying out a list of concerns shared by many Americans. “AI has enormous potential to improve our world, but the American people are right to be concerned about very real risks it poses if we are not careful — from navigating demands on our energy and water resources, to its impact on job security, the dangers it may pose to our children and to our national security,” the congressman said.
That stance puts Roy at odds with Trump, who has repeatedly framed AI development as a race the United States must win against China, dismissing safety concerns as overblown. Trump has gone so far as to declare that fears of AI “taking over the World, destroying Humanity, and all other things bad” amount to a “HOAX.”
Roy addressed the president’s skepticism directly, striking a more nuanced tone. “The President is also right to be skeptical when large technology companies suddenly come to Washington asking to be regulated. Government is rarely the answer to our problems. Innovation is,” Roy told the Caller. “The President, Congress, industry, and, most importantly, the American people must come together to confront these unique challenges and ensure that technology remains a tool that serves us, not one that turns us into tools of technology.”
In a follow-up post on X, Roy’s press office doubled down on the message, quoting the congressman as saying, “We need massive transparency, we need answers, but we also need robust competition. AI needs to be a tool for humans. God gave us dominion over this planet. We should NOT be a tool of AI.”
Roy isn’t alone in sounding the alarm. Over the weekend, several top AI executives issued their own warnings. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei published an essay titled “We Must Pace the Frontier,” urging the industry to slow down. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman responded in agreement, while Tesla and SpaceX chief Elon Musk chimed in as well, simply writing, “Dario is right.”
The public appears to share those concerns. A June Pew Research Center poll found that half of U.S. adults say the increased use of AI is more concerning than exciting. Meanwhile, a Johns Hopkins University poll conducted in April and May found that more than 70 percent of Americans support legal restrictions on AI across sectors including medical care, legal proceedings and government services — numbers that line up closely with Roy’s call for tighter guardrails.
