Trump Ignores AI Dangers, Puts Corporate Power and US Dominance Over Global Safety
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President Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson dismissed urgent calls for a pause in artificial intelligence development, prioritizing US competition with China over global safety, while tech CEOs warned about the risks of unchecked corporate-driven AI.
President Donald Trump on Sunday trivialized mounting concerns about artificial intelligence spiraling out of control, brushing off warnings as the work of so-called "negative forces" and ignoring the growing chorus of experts urging caution. Speaking from his luxury golf resort in Doonbeg, Ireland, Trump boasted that the United States is "leading China in AI" and claimed it is "the most sophisticated country in the world," making clear that his administration's priority is maintaining technological dominance, regardless of the risks.
"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," Trump said, refusing to identify who he considers these 'negative forces,' but clearly dismissing legitimate concerns from scientists and civil society.
House Speaker Mike Johnson parroted Trump's nationalist rhetoric in a CNN interview, warning that any congressional moratorium on AI would supposedly endanger the US position relative to China. Instead of advocating for public oversight, he called on profit-driven tech firms to self-regulate, a move that has historically failed to protect the public from corporate excess.
"If Congress just races in and does some sort of emergency session to try to regulate AI, we will lose the race to China. And that is a threat to every single American. So, we've got to have balance. We got to have steady hands at the wheel," Johnson said, framing the issue as a zero-sum competition rather than a matter of global safety.
Their remarks came after Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei published a thoughtful essay urging a slowdown in AI development, citing real risks such as loss of control, cyber-attacks, and bioterrorism, and advocating for international cooperation and independent oversight. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and billionaire Elon Musk echoed Amodei’s concerns, with Altman even delaying OpenAI’s public listing until at least 2027 for safety reasons.
David Sacks, co-chair of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, responded to the tech leaders on social media, supporting responsible caution but cynically warning against portraying their motives as purely altruistic.
"I don't see what you see in the lab. If the unreleased models are scary enough that you think you should slow down, I support your decision to be responsible. Most of all, stop pretending you need anyone else's permission to make such moves. You face massive product-liability exposure if your products enable a truly damaging cyberattack," Sacks wrote, highlighting the legal risks but sidestepping the broader ethical implications.