Josh Shapiro wades into AI debate with call for ‘strict guardrails’

(CNN) — Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro on Thursday called for greater federal regulation of artificial intelligence while criticizing President Donald Trump for minimizing concerns, saying “We cannot ignore the warning signs nor downplay the very real risks.”

“I am not a doomer. I don’t think that it is inevitable that AI is going to take over the world, or that someone will misuse it to kill us or to do harm,” Shapiro said at an AI summit in Pittsburgh on Thursday. “But I do have real concerns, as do many Pennsylvanians and many Americans, and I don’t think that the very real concerns of our neighbors that they overwhelmingly express about this technology is a hoax, as our president has called it.”

Debate about whether to regulate the rapidly advancing technology has escalated amid calls from industry leaders to slow down AI development. Democrats eyeing potential White House runs in 2028, like Shapiro, are grappling with how to approach AI amid increased concerns about the technology’s progress, and President Barack Obama recently encouraged those considering running for president in the coming years to prioritize AI policy in their forthcoming agendas.

Shapiro called for the federal government to “develop strict guardrails” on AI, including third party oversight of frontier models, greater transparency in the development process, and safety prioritization.

The governor also pushed for building international consensus on regulating the technology, arguing Trump should prioritize discussing “practical guardrails to reduce risks to the American people” in his conversations with China’s President Xi Jinping next week. He criticized Speaker Mike Johnson for sending the House into recess without action on AI.

Trump has pushed back on calls for greater government regulation, calling concerns about AI a “HOAX” and part of a “sick conspiracy.” On the other end of the spectrum, Sen. Bernie Sanders has called for a ban on superintelligence that could subvert human control.

In his speech, Shapiro sought to strike a middle ground, saying “There’s something in between accelerating and ignoring the road ahead and slamming on the brakes and refusing to move forward.”

Shapiro delivered the speech several weeks after issuing an executive order aimed at limiting AI-generating data centers in Pennsylvania by ending fast-track approvals and establishing new development requirements. That move came one year after Shapiro touted Amazon’s $20 billion investment in data centers in the state and stated his administration was “all in on AI.”

As frustration over data centers has risen, Shapiro has run data center focused attack ads against his GOP opponent Stacy Garrity in this year’s governor’s race, calling her “Pennsylvania’s number one fan of data centers.” Garrity has pushed back with her own spot, though on a much smaller spending scale, calling out Shapiro’s initial embrace of Amazon’s investments.

In his speech Thursday, Shapiro also called out those within the AI industry potentially working to thwart regulation efforts going forward.

“Some of those same companies who have been calling for regulation in public have been funding the groups in private who have been fighting against it,” he said. “They don’t get to claim the moral high ground by saying one thing publicly and doing another thing privately, because people are pretty smart. They can see right through that.”

The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2026 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.