Rep. Chip Roy doesn’t want to regulate AI, but says Congress should have an oversight role

Rep. Chip Roy doesn't want to regulate AI, but says Congress should have an oversight role. Chip Roy, R-Texas, said during an appearance on CNBC's "Squawk Box" that Congress has a clear role when it comes to oversight of artificial intelligence, but that doesn't necessarily mean regulation.

What happened

Chip Roy, R-Texas, a GOP House hardliner and proponent of limited government, said during a Friday appearance on CNBC's "Squawk Box" that he feels Congress has an oversight role to play when it comes to artificial intelligence. In an appearance on CNBC's "Squawk Box," Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, said he supports congressional hearings on AI, but wasn't keen on additional regulations. But that doesn't necessarily means he thinks the legislature should demand regulation of the technology.

Elizabeth Frantz | Reuters"There's a perfect role in our federal form of government, our republican form of government, for Congress to have these guys come tell us what they're doing for something that's so pervasive," Roy said. It should come as no surprise that Mustafa has strong opinions on how AI should be built and regulated. If it doesn’t achieve that, then we should reject it. Composite: Getty ImagesThe US government is failing Americans on AIShakeel HashimTrump and Republicans want companies to regulate themselves.

The wider picture

Chip Roy on AI: We need some responsibility from the AI companiesSquawk BoxRep. "Instead, Roy said, he'd be in favor of AI CEOs testifying at congressional hearings and explaining what they're doing to address safety concerns. Representative Chip Roy (R-TX) speaks during a press conference regarding federal government spending on Capitol Hill in Washington, September 12, 2023. 3 billion F-35 deal to Saudi ArabiaBill to curb AI data center utility costs hits snag in SenateHouse heads home to campaign amid calls for urgent AI actionWhile there is bipartisan concern at the pace with which AI is developing, there's little consensus on how the federal government should respond.

"Roy, at the Future of Life Institute conference, pushed back on an assertion from Trump that the president should be the lone person making decisions on AI. I want competition and free enterprise to rule the day. I don't want crony capitalism, crony government interference," Roy said. PodcastsAIPolicyMicrosoft AI CEO says AI threats are real, and Anthropic is making it worseMustafa Suleyman on the AI safety debate, why AI isn’t consciousness, and how the industry pushes toward alignment. by Nilay PatelSep 17, 2026, 2:00 PM UTCPart OfThe AI Superintelligence Slowdownsee all updates Nilay Patel is editor-in-chief of The Verge, host of the Decoder podcast, and co-host of The Vergecast.

What has been reported

So I really wanted to talk to Mustafa about what he thinks is real and not in AI safety, whether the concept of alignment itself is up to the task, and whether this industry needs to slow down before it kills us all. You just published a very long, very detailed document laying out your principles, Microsoft’s principles, around what you’re calling “Humanist AI. ”There’s a lot of ideas in there I want to unpack.

The more I have been thinking about this conversation, the more I want to start with a really foundational question. We want technologies to spread far and wide as quickly as possible so that everyone can enjoy the benefits. Of course, we want to align these things to our values, but the first thing is that we have to make sure they’re contained, their agency is limited, they don’t escape the box, they don’t reward hack, that they are controllable, and they follow our instruction.

We then want to make sure that they are aligned to our objectives as humans. It should be a subordinate, controllable, aligned force that does good in the world. I want to drag this down into as grounded of a metaphor as I can, because this is the main question I think I have.

What happens next

If I designed a car and 10 percent of the time the brake pedal decided to go attack my neighbor’s house, I would be like, “This car doesn’t work. Now, we need to add a layer of containment that exerts even more control, that says you can actually do this thing you’re trying to do in addition to alignment, which is how you would train the model to behave in certain ways. This is in your Humanist AI Code of Conduct that there should be no neuralese — if humans can’t understand it, they can’t oversee it.

I think that we should just take a breath to be grateful for the fact that we can have a massive public disagreement about really important things. So it’s not like there’s consensus on how or precisely what, but overall I think that we should be less alarmist and cynical and more like we’re headed in the right direction with respect to the concerns that are being raised here. The reason I started with alignment is if you told me alignment doesn’t work and we need a new technological approach, I think I would be at, “well, slam the brakes and stop all development until you figure out a safety mechanism that works. ” You’re saying alignment has been demonstrated to work over the course of progress that we’ve seen.

As soon as we did, we started figuring out, “Okay, what is the governing document, the set of policies, that shape the kinds of AI that we want to build? ” We’ve been doing that in consultation with a ton of external stakeholders, academics, lawyers, philosophers, members of the public, focus groups and stuff.

The report has been compiled by The Daily Waves using information reported across cnbc.com, theverge.com, theguardian.com. Details are presented according to the information available at the time of publication and may change as authorities, organisers or other relevant parties provide updates.