TRUMP DISMISSES AI SAFETY CONCERNS, SAYS US ALREADY HAS TOOLS TO POLICE INDUSTRY

Read Time:3 Minute, 56 Second

Agency report

President Donald Trump has dismissed growing concerns over the potential dangers of artificial intelligence, saying the United States already has measures in place to regulate and prosecute AI companies.

Trump made the remarks on Monday as public concern over the misuse and potential risks of AI continued to grow, following warnings from industry figures and researchers.

Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon said last week that he had resigned partly because the “people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade.”

The concerns came as AI-related stocks fell worldwide on Monday after executives at some of the industry’s largest companies called for a slowdown in the pace of AI development.

“The only control or ‘guardrails’ that AI needs is a STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT, and the U.S.A. has that, in spades!” Trump wrote on Truth Social.

He also argued that raising doubts about AI development could benefit China.

Trump is scheduled to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping next week in Washington. Reuters previously reported that the two countries were planning a separate meeting in mid-September involving lower-level government officials to discuss AI-related risks.

US House Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters on Monday that he expects Trump to meet with AI executives this week or “early next week.”

According to Johnson, the meeting would focus on “the responsibilities of the companies to maintain safety and what role, if any, the government has to play in that.”

Vice President JD Vance separately expressed skepticism about AI executives calling on the US government to regulate the industry.

“I feel a little bit weird about the fact that you have so many frontier AI tech companies kind of coming to the government and begging the government to regulate them,” Vance said.

Trump, meanwhile, described the AI industry’s call for regulation as a “hoax.”

AMODEI’S PROPOSAL

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei wrote in an essay published on Saturday that the US government should introduce regulations requiring independent audits of the most advanced AI systems, known as “frontier” models.

Reuters reported on Monday that three US senators are working on a bill that would require AI companies to demonstrate that they are taking reasonable precautions to prevent their tools from causing harm. The specific provisions are still being debated.

In his essay, Amodei proposed a three-step framework aimed at slowing the pace of AI development and giving governments, companies and society more time to manage its risks.

The proposal was quickly endorsed by executives at several major AI companies, including Elon Musk, who runs xAI, and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.

US Senator Mark Warner, a Virginia Democrat and prominent technology legislator, spoke with Amodei and Altman over the weekend about concerns surrounding AI safety, according to his spokesperson.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang also addressed the issue during the All-In Summit in Los Angeles on Monday.

“There’s just a whole bunch of stuff: pausing, pacing. Those are all voluntary things that they could do if they feel that their company is out of control,” Huang said.

During the event, Huang received a phone call from Trump and put him on speaker for the audience.

In the roughly five-minute conversation, Trump said data centres make people and states wealthy, describing them as the “oil of the next 20, 25 years”.

Trump also said critics of AI development were “playing right into the hands of a lot of people that don’t want to see it happen, and that could be political people, that could also be China”.

“We’re not going to let that happen,” Trump said, drawing agreement from Huang.

Trump has largely embraced technology companies during his second term and has so far resisted calls for greater restrictions on AI development.

He said the tools intended to keep AI safe had already been used against Amodei’s Anthropic, although he did not provide details.

“The Trump Administration has stopped AI ‘people’ from doing bad, or potentially bad, ‘things,’ like Dario (Anthropic!), who is now pretending to be a ‘perfect little angel’ — and we will continue to do so,” Trump wrote on social media.

Anthropic’s media team did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Reuters about Trump’s statement.

The Trump administration is currently in a dispute with Anthropic over AI safety and military applications.

US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth blocked the company from certain military contracts after Anthropic refused to allow the US to use its Claude AI models for domestic surveillance or autonomous weapons.

Anthropic subsequently sued in a California court, with a US judge siding with the company in one of the lawsuits on August 27.