Tim Cook says AI is a 'huge opportunity' while visiting Capitol Hill

Apple CEO Tim Cook calls AI a 'huge opportunity' while visiting Capitol Hill

Apple CEO Tim Cook visited Capitol Hill, though he wasn't at the Senate AI forum, and called artificial intelligence an 'opportunity' rather than a threat to humanity.

EXCLUSIVE: Apple CEO Tim Cook told Fox News Digital on Wednesday that artificial intelligence presents a "huge opportunity" for humanity.

He was on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., but notably was not an expected attendee of the Senate’s bipartisan AI Insight Forum, which featured other tech CEOs like Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg and SpaceX founder Elon Musk.

Cook confirmed that he was not there for the forum. Fox News Digital spotted him on Wednesday afternoon in the basement of the Russell Senate Office Building, only several floors below where lawmakers and experts were meeting behind closed doors in the Kennedy Caucus Room.

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Apple CEO Tim Cook briefly spoke with Fox News Digital during a visit to Capitol Hill on Wednesday. (Fox News Digital/Elizabeth Elkind)

"Just touching base with a number of folks," he responded when asked why he was visiting Congress.

Asked if he had any thoughts on AI in general, Cook said, "Not that I’ll share today."

"I think it’s a huge opportunity," he added when pressed about whether AI is a threat to humanity.

The AI Insight Forum was the first of several such sessions held by the Senate’s bipartisan AI working group, designed to make lawmakers better informed about how to deal with the rapidly advancing technology.

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Elon Musk, CEO of X, the company formerly known as Twitter, speaks to the media after attending the closed-door gathering on Wednesday. (AP/Jacquelyn Martin / AP Images)

The vast majority of tech giants who did attend suggested they were open to some form of regulation, Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chair Gary Peters, D-Mich., told Fox News Digital.

"I think one of the biggest takeaways coming out of the forum is that we had all of the executives, all the folks at the forum raise their hand to say that government regulation is essential. And they also stressed this regulation needs to happen fairly quickly," Peters said.

Musk spoke to reporters after the first half of the forum and voiced support for some form of regulation.

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Leadership Conference on Civil & Human Rights President and CEO Maya Wiley and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg attend the AI Insight Forum outside the Kennedy Caucus Room in the Russell Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., on Wedn (Getty Images)

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"It’s important for us to have a referee, just as you have a referee in a sports game, or sports games, and that the games are better for it to ensure that players play [by the] rules, play fairly," Musk said.

"It’s important for similar reasons to have a regulator, which you can think of as a referee, to ensure that companies take actions that are safe and in the interest of the general public."