WASHINGTON — U.S. President Donald Trump attacked calls from within the artificial intelligence industry to slow down AI development three times in a single day. The remarks come as the AI competition between the United States and China is being compared to the nuclear and moon-race contests between the United States and the Soviet Union, and are seen as reflecting anxiety that slowing development could leave the United States trailing China across every field.
Trump wrote on Truth Social on the 14th that there is a sick conspiracy aimed at AI and data centers, and that the only country that would be pleased by it is China. He added that whoever wins AI will win, that the United States is ahead of China and every other country and will remain so, and warned conspiracy theorists, traitors, betrayers and leakers to watch out.
Anthropic Chief Executive Dario Amodei, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Tesla CEO Elon Musk have recently argued that the pace of AI development should be moderated. Altman and Musk, known to be on very poor terms, drew particular attention by speaking with one voice in an unusual show of agreement. Separately, researchers at Anthropic and Google have resigned in succession, saying AI could escape human control and bring about the end of humanity.
On government regulation of AI, Trump argued that the only control or safeguard AI needs is a strong and smart, high-IQ president, and that the United States has such a president in enormous measure. He also criticized Amodei, saying the Anthropic CEO is pretending to be a perfect little angel.
Trump said the U.S. government has stopped AI industry figures such as Amodei from doing bad things or potentially bad things and will continue to do so, stressing that the government already holds enormous criminal and regulatory authority over these companies.
In another post, Trump called the claim that AI will take over the world, destroy humanity and commit all manner of other bad acts a hoax. He also said Chinese President Xi Jinping had just announced that China would take no measures standing in the way of AI or its future, and noted that Google recently announced it would build a large plant in Finland because permitting procedures in the United States are too difficult.
AI and data centers will be the greatest driver of economic development in history, he said, on a scale bigger than oil, gold, diamonds and even the internet. No matter how cleverly destructive forces maneuver during his term, he said, they will not be able to stop it.
