Trump calls AI safety fears a ‘hoax,’ blasts Amodei

President Donald Trump on Monday attacked growing calls to slow artificial intelligence development, dismissing fears that AI could destroy humanity as a "HOAX" and labeling safety warnings from Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei a "SICK conspiracy" that benefits China.

"The Only Guardrail AI Needs"

In a pair of posts on Truth Social, Trump compared AI safety concerns to what he called debunked political controversies from his first term. "AI taking over the World, destroying Humanity, and all other things bad, is a HOAX," he wrote, likening the warnings to the Russia investigation and his first impeachment over Ukraine.moneycontrol+1

In a second post, Trump declared himself the only safeguard needed. "The only control or 'guardrails' that AI needs is a STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT," he wrote, before singling out Amodei as someone "pretending to be a 'perfect little angel.'" He added: "There is a SICK conspiracy going on against AI and Data Centers, and the only one that is happy about it is China. WHOEVER WINS AI, WINS!"nypost+2

Trump's remarks came after Amodei published a 3,800-word essay on Saturday titled "We Must Pace the Frontier," arguing that the AI industry should deliberately slow the rate at which it improves model capabilities to allow safety measures to catch up. As a first step, Anthropic committed to giving third-party evaluators permanent, employee-level access to its operations.variety+2

Industry Lines Up Behind Slowdown

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman posted on X shortly after Amodei's essay, writing that he agreed the industry needed to "pace the frontier" and that the topic had been a primary focus of internal discussions at OpenAI in recent weeks. Elon Musk also backed the proposal. Microsoft ↗ 2.74% CEO Satya Nadella expressed support for embedding evaluators within AI systems, writing on X that "any pursuit of superintelligence has to be grounded in the core principle that if the AI we build is not helping humanity and under human control, it's not worth pursuing".irishsun+2

The debate intensified after former Anthropic and OpenAI researcher Jacob Coxon quit his job last week and warned on X that AI "could kill us all by the end of the decade," a post that has drawn more than 171 million views.nypost

China Pushback and What Comes Next

Trump also pointed to China's approach, claiming President Xi Jinping had said China would do "absolutely nothing" to stand in the way of AI. Beijing pushed back on the broader debate Monday. "Fear mongering, confrontation, competition will just disrupt the process of global AI governance," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun said, according to Reuters Thomson Reuters Corporation ↘ 9.87%. An editorial by the state-backed Global Times compared calls for China to slow its AI work to "Cold War" tactics.moneycontrol+1

Trump is set to meet Xi on Sept. 24. Whether AI governance features on the agenda remains to be seen, but Amodei himself acknowledged the difficulty of the task. "The incentives to pull ahead and the military advantage that you get from that are so large. And honestly, I don't know if it's possible, but we should try," he told CBS News.nypost