As the AI industry calls for a cooperative slowdown in development to prevent potential disaster, President Donald Trump threw cold water on governmental regulation on Monday morning with a Truth Social post insisting that he alone is the only “guardrail” needed.
“The only control or “guardrails” that AI needs is a STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT, and the U.S.A. has that, in spades! The Trump Administration has stopped AI “people” from doing bad, or potentially bad, “things,“ like Dario (Anthropic!), who is now pretending to be a “perfect little angel” – and we will continue to do so! We already have tremendous CRIMINAL and REGULATORY power over these companies!”
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! We are leading China, and all others, and will continue to do so. Conspiracy Theorists, Treasonists, Traitors, and Leakers, BEWARE! Thank you for your attention to this matter!”
If Trump’s dig against Modei seems personal, it likely stems from Anthropic’s refusal to remove safety restrictions for the Department of Defense, after which Trump ordered the government to phase out use of Anthropic products.
Trump’s post comes after a weekend of shocking unity among AI leaders. It began with Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, who said in a nearly 4,000-word essay, “We must slow the pace at which we improve the capabilities of AI models. Progress will still seem fast, and we must make wise use of the time we gain.”
A few hours later, both Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, Dennis Hassabis, chief scientist at Alphabet and co-founder of Google DeepMind and Elon Musk, SpaceXAI (formerly xAI) posted tweets in agreement.
Amodei asked for a third-party regulatory body, which Altman also agreed was necessary.
“I agree with Dario that we need to pace the frontier. This has been a primary topic of discussions we’ve had at OpenAI in recent weeks,” he tweeted. “Committing to having independent evaluators with employee-like access is a great idea, and we will do the same. We’ll have more to share soon.”
But lawmakers weren’t as quick to jump on the “slowdown” bandwagon, with Speaker of the House Mike Johnson said the responsibility for AI safety should not fall to Congress.
“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,” he said in an interview with CNN’s “State of the Union.”
Trump’s Monday comments echo his initial reaction to the call for a slowdown over the weekend, when he reiterated the need to pace ahead of China’s AI development.
