President Donald Trump on Monday pushed back against growing calls for stronger regulation of artificial intelligence, slamming Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei over his urgent plea to slow down artificial intelligence.
“The only control or ‘guardrail’ that AI needs is a strong and smart (high IQ!) president. America has that!” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social.
“The Trump administration has stopped AI “people” from doing “things” that are bad or could be bad, like Dario (human!), who is currently pretending to be a “perfect little angel,” and we will continue to do so!” Trump wrote.
In a follow-up post late Monday morning, President Trump claimed that “the only reason we’re seeing an explosion in AI and data centers is because America is far ahead of every other country.”
“Don’t kill the golden goose!” he wrote.
The president’s latest defense of the near-unfettered growth of AI comes amid a sudden increase in voices from major industries sounding the alarm about the risks of the nascent technology.
Amodei published a blog post on Saturday titled “We have to slow down the frontier,” arguing that AI model development should be slowed to “reduce the risk of something seriously going wrong.”
Days earlier, former Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon quit his job and warned that the technology could “kill us all by the end of the decade,” while simultaneously accusing both OpenAI and Anthropic of “putting our lives on the line.”
Sam Altman, head of OpenAI, space x Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk said over the weekend that he agreed with calls for a slowdown.
The Trump administration has widely encouraged the industry’s rapid growth and controversial data center development in the United States, seeking unsurpassed technological advantages over China.
“We are leading China in AI,” President Trump said Saturday.
“Frankly, I want to keep it that way, because whoever beats the AI wins,” the president said.
In a Truth Social post on Monday, Trump argued that big AI companies are already sufficiently reined in.
“We already have tremendous criminal and regulatory powers over these companies!” he wrote. “There is a SICK conspiracy going on against AI and data centers, but only China is happy about it.”
“Whoever wins against AI wins! We are leading China and all other countries and will continue to do so. Conspiracy theorists, traitors, traitors and leakers, beware!” he added.
Anthropic did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Trump’s post.
White House AI czar David Sachs on Saturday pushed back against growing concerns about AI, writing in an
“Stop acting as if your motivation to slow down is purely altruistic,” Sacks wrote. “If your products enable truly harmful cyberattacks, you will face significant product liability. The market is already punishing models that behave in unpredictable or deceptive ways.”
He added that it was “very unlikely” that China would join a global agreement regulating the technology.
It seems highly unlikely that Congress will attempt to regulate AI before the November 3rd midterm elections. The House members will leave town on Thursday and remain in the district until October.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) on Sunday downplayed the need to pass legislation to rein in AI development.
“If Congress just jumps in and tries to have some kind of emergency session to regulate AI, we’re going to lose the race to China, and that’s a threat to all Americans,” Johnson said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
“There’s no need for everyone to panic right now. We need to treat this new technology like any other technology in the past, and we need to make sure we do everything we can responsibly to not stifle American innovation,” he said.
—CNBC’s Ashley Capoot contributed to this report.
