Melania Trump urges AI vigilance as US-China tech race intensifies

The US First Lady, Melania Trump, just shared AI advice and personal anecdotes during a broad interview on “The Big Money Show.” Speaking to the show’s hosts, she said AI is currently a major talking point and that the public must be cautious when using it. 

According to Melania Trump, the nation needed to utilize it intelligently. She emphasized that AI users shouldn’t blindly trust everything they see, urging better self-education about these tools to accurately judge what is authentic.

Her remarks come at a time when tech pioneers are increasingly sounding the alarm on the technology and demanding tighter controls. More recently, President Donald Trump has dismissed those AI safety warnings, calling them a “hoax.”

Melania encourages students to learn to use AI

The First Lady also backed incorporating artificial intelligence into education, saying the technology can have an important role in schools and can provide educational benefits for children.

She pointed to a recent visit to North Carolina, where Nvidia and other organizations provided AI learning resources to students. The White House said earlier this month that the initiative provided 1,500 students in Ashe County with AI literacy training licenses and 100 robotics learning kits powered by Nvidia’s Jetson Nano technology.

Moreover, during her earlier visit to Mountain View Elementary School in rural Jefferson, which focuses on AI, robotics, and engineering, the first lady noted that to keep America at the forefront of the AI race, students must be taught how to use AI.

She said, “I think they need to learn that we need to lead. Of course, they need to be vigilant as well. But this is our future. And we need to guide them and teach them what is available. If not, they will stay behind. And we need to be the first, in the United States, to lead.”

During the Big Money show, she also contended that AI could be very educational to students, though she called for careful use of the technology.

When asked how she uses the tech herself, the First Lady also explained that she primarily uses AI for research. She said the technology allows her to quickly find information when she wants to understand a subject, but she checks information elsewhere when she is uncertain about whether an AI-generated answer is accurate.

That approach highlights one of the central challenges of rapid adoption of generative AI: Users can access information almost instantly, but the responses still need to be verified.

The focus on verification also reflects growing concern about the reliability of AI-generated information. Generative AI systems can provide good answers but still make factual errors, so it is important for users to view AI as a tool for research rather than a source of truth. For students in particular, this could make digital literacy an important part of AI education as schools introduce it into classrooms.

Melania pushes digital skills initiative

Speaking on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly on Tuesday, the First Lady championed her ‘Fostering the Future Together’ initiative, which unites public sectors and tech corporations to equip youth with crucial digital skills and schooling.

“We are living in an extraordinary moment in human history. We stand together at the threshold of a technological revolution,” she asserted.

She reiterated that providing children with technological tools is only the first step, noting that they also need guidance on how to use them properly.

At the moment, some scholars are opposed to the idea of children becoming acquainted with AI. MIT professor Eric Klopfer even warned that the technology creates an “illusion of learning.”

In fact, an MIT committee also investigating AI’s role in education found preliminary signs that leaning too heavily on chatbots can blunt critical thinking, fade memory, shake student confidence, and hurt overall subject mastery.

Trump rebranded AI as ‘super intelligence’

Meanwhile, President Donald Trump also called for the US to dominate the AI space in his United Nations General Assembly speech on Tuesday.

He also used the speech to rebrand artificial intelligence, introducing the term “Super Intelligence.”

“Whoever wins AI, you have to remember this, and now I say whoever wins, whoever wins ‘superintelligence,’ wins. That’s the group that wins,” Trump said. 

He added, “We’re leading now over China by a lot and everyone else. We’re going to keep it that way. We’re going to keep it very straight and very strong.”

The US President also maintained his opposition to implementing regulatory frameworks or new guardrails, a position that conflicts with the views of numerous UN delegates.

Nonetheless, proponents of more AI regulation have a lot ahead of them; they still need to ensure that international diplomacy can evolve quickly enough to keep pace with rapidly accelerating technology.