Former U.S. President Barack Obama said Friday that international regulation of artificial intelligence is necessary but will face significant obstacles, citing limited trust between the United States and China.
Speaking at the Game Changers Forum in Lisbon before an audience of more than 10,000 people, Obama said both nations are the most advanced in artificial intelligence development but currently lack confidence in each other.
"We still do not have the safety guidelines we need," Obama said. "Regulation has to start in the United States. China is another country."
Obama, the 44th U.S. president who served from 2009 to 2017 and won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009, emphasized that coordinating AI regulation across nations will prove challenging. "We have to regulate and coordinate between nations and that is going to be a great challenge," he said.
The former president acknowledged that the technological evolution of artificial intelligence requires international frameworks but stressed the difficulty of achieving such coordination given current geopolitical tensions. He noted that safety protocols and regulatory standards remain underdeveloped globally.