Trump vs AI brakes
Trump told reporters during a weekend trip to Ireland, “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.”
The comments came a day after Dario Amodei, CEO of the artificial intelligence company Anthropic, said the industry should put the brakes on its fast-moving development to give safety measures time to catch up.
Other tech leaders including Elon Musk and Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, publicly agreed with Amodei, while Trump said the United States is leading China in AI development.
Trump also said he was concerned about ceding the U.S. advantage to China in a global competition and that winning would help address the risks from the advancing technology.
Warnings, resignations, and quotes
The BBC reported that one warning came from a former Anthropic researcher who said “there is a strong chance that we could all die in the immediate future” if the current pace of development continued.
On the same day, the BBC said AI researcher Jacob Coxon—who quit Anthropic a few days ago—told the BBC that staff who were developing the systems were “genuinely frightened” for the future of humanity.
The BBC also described how Coxon welcomed the idea of a slowdown but said it would need to be co-ordinated with China, while Elon Musk and Sam Altman backed a warning from Dario Amodei to slow development “to reduce the risk that something goes seriously wrong.”
Trump did not directly address the idea of slowing down, but he reiterated, “We’re leading China on AI… and, frankly, I want to keep it that way because whoever wins AI, wins.”
The BBC further said Speaker Mike Johnson urged caution about rushing AI regulation, arguing it could “smother American innovation,” while Hakeem Jeffries argued for “decisive action” to slow the pace of development to protect the American people.
Congressional stakes and next steps
House Speaker Mike Johnson acknowledged the need for “some guardrails, some safety measures” so AI “doesn’t run away,” while also saying he wants to ensure the U.S. does not “lose our edge in the global competition on this with China because that would be a national security threat.”
Johnson said he has discussed the issue with Trump and believes a meeting held quickly should be the “next step,” adding, “So we’re going to pull everybody together and make sure we do this in the right way.”
Democratic House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries criticized Republican leaders for allowing members to go back to their districts for the final part of September and said, “We should take decisive action now so that we can slow down, as the CEOs have recently acknowledged, … the pace of development to protect the American people and ensure AI is proceeding safely.”
The debate is tied to an upcoming meeting between Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping, who is due to visit the U.S. later in September, with AI likely among the items they discuss.
