Trump rejects AI slowdown calls, says US must stay ahead of China
US President Donald Trump on Sunday played down calls to slow the development of artificial intelligence, saying the United States must protect its lead over China in the global race for the technology. While he acknowledged the need for some regulation, he did not spell out any possible rules and suggested that some warnings about AI moving too fast were being amplified by unnamed "negative forces".
Trump's remarks came as debate over AI safety and regulation gathered pace in the US, with industry leaders, White House officials and lawmakers weighing the risks of the fast-moving technology against concerns about competition with China. The issue has also become part of the US election-year political debate.
Speaking to reporters during a weekend trip to Ireland, Trump said: "We can put guardrails, we can do this and that, but I think you have a lot of negative forces that are bringing it up that ... shouldn't be bringing it up, and they're bringing up things that won't happen." He added, "But whoever wins with AI wins." Later, after watching a golfer tee off in the Irish Open at his resort in Doonbeg, Trump said the US was ahead of China in AI and "frankly, I want to keep it that way because whoever wins AI wins".
Trump spoke a day after Anthropic chief executive Dario Amodei said the industry should put the brakes on rapid AI development to give safety measures time to catch up. Other technology leaders, including Elon Musk and OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman, publicly agreed with Amodei. Chinese President Xi Jinping is due to visit the US later in September for talks with Trump, and AI is likely to be among the subjects discussed.
AI has become a major issue in the US election year as some of the country's biggest companies build a nationwide network of data centres in small towns, while people across party lines voice concerns about shrinking farmland and water supplies and rising electricity bills. Trump has continued to back data centres even as Republicans and Democrats distance themselves from them and many communities try to block them.
Former president Barack Obama said Democrats should make AI a campaign issue. "I would talk about this, and I would say, Here's our plan for safety, here's our plan for making sure our kids are not corrupted by this... I would be thinking about the economic impacts in very concrete ways and understanding what does it mean if there's going to be job displacement. Where is that going to hit? How are we going to respond?" he said at an event last week with House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries, according to a transcript released by his office.
Kevin Hassett, director of the National Economic Council at the White House, said he expected meetings this week involving administration officials responsible for cyber and science and technology policy to discuss next steps. He also said Trump could meet members of Congress, some of whom have been warning about the speed of AI development. "I think the president wants to hear from them as well," Hassett said.
House Speaker Mike Johnson said there was a need for "some guardrails, some safety measures" so AI "doesn't run away". But, like Trump, he said the US must not "lose our edge in the global competition on this with China because that would be a national security threat". Johnson said industry leaders should be summoned for "one big meeting and work this out together in the same room". He said he had discussed the issue with Trump and that such a meeting should be the "next step". "So we're going to pull everybody together and make sure we do this in the right way," Johnson said, adding that it was a "top priority for me and for the Congress". "But we don't need everybody to panic right now," he said.
Jeffries criticised Republican leaders for allowing members to return to their districts for the final part of September. "We should take decisive action now so that we can slow down, as the CEOs have recently acknowledged the pace of development in order to protect the American people and ensure that AI is proceeding safely," he said. He added that action on AI would be a "high priority" when House Democrats meet on Tuesday. Even so, neither Johnson nor Jeffries set out specific steps Congress might take. Lawmakers broadly agree that more guardrails are needed, but even limited efforts to impose rules have fallen apart over the years, reflecting Congress's reluctance to regulate the technology industry.
Jacob Coxon, a former Anthropic employee who resigned over AI concerns, argued for international rules alongside self-regulation by the industry. He said he had become worried that AI models could soon gain capabilities beyond human control. "You're building a human-level or superhuman-level mind, without understanding what it wants, or thinks, or the way it thinks," Coxon said. He also urged cooperation between the US and China to slow development and address safety. "I do hope that the people in China who are looking at the same problems as we are, so they're trying to build the same technology, will come to the same conclusion that it has to be done in a measured manner, and it should be easy to cooperate on some sort of mutual -- of mutual slowing," he said. Otherwise, he added, "We risk running the same race with China, which could be equally dangerous."
Tech founder and investor David Sacks pushed back in a social media post, saying Amodei and other industry leaders were themselves setting the pace for development and could slow it on their own. "The easiest way not to build superintelligence is for you to agree not to build it," Sacks wrote. The debate now spans the White House, Congress and the technology industry, with broad agreement on the need for safeguards but no clear plan yet on how they should be put in place.
