Trump has pushed back repeatedly in the past week against the warnings about AI, which reached fever pitch after Claude-maker Anthropic’s CEO Dario Amodei urged a halt in development.
Amodei’s call to “slow the pace” was backed by OpenAI boss Sam Altman and Elon Musk, the SpaceX and Tesla boss who also owns xAI and was previously part of Trump’s White House team.
But Trump trained his fire on Amodei, accusing him of playing both sides of the debate.
Trump wrote: “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’.”
Speaking on Air Force One on Sunday, Trump said he had heard directly from tech insiders the previous week on the issue.
Asked if he was downplaying their concerns, he said: “No, we are not downplaying, but you know it’s going to be more good than bad by a lot.”
Trump has long portrayed AI as crucial for maintaining America’s technological, economic and security lead over China, whose President Xi Jinping is due to visit the White House next week.
China’s spy chief warned on Sunday that artificial intelligence endangered the country’s national security, saying foreign powers could use the technology to threaten social order.
Minister of State Security Chen Yixin wrote in an article that AI was now “the main battleground for global technological competition and a new track for major power strategic rivalry”.
He singled out Anthropic’s Claude Mythos and OpenAI’s ChatGPT-5.5-Cyber for their advanced hacking capabilities that potentially “pose serious risks to China’s critical information infrastructure”.
Global concerns about AI and a possible extinction event have dramatically escalated in recent days.
King Charles will host representatives of leading AI firms for a gathering in Scotland, a source close to the event said Monday, as the worries mount.
Dario Amodei, co-founder and chief executive officer of Anthropic. Photo / Getty Images
The United Nations rights chief called for countries and artificial intelligence companies to act urgently to rein in a technology he warned posed “unprecedented risks”.
In a letter sent to countries and AI developers and shared with the media, Volker Turk cautioned that the world was “on the cusp of irreversible change, affecting not just us but generations of humanity to come”.
The head of French defence and technology group Thales also called on governments to take responsibility for regulating artificial intelligence.
Trump and his Republicans have so far resisted growing calls to push through regulation.
Trump’s administration is also expected to scrap limits on carbon emissions from fossil fuel-fired power plants.
The changes would both roll back rules introduced by former President Joe Biden’s administration in 2024 – which required coal and gas power plants to eliminate nearly all their carbon emissions – and go further, by proposing to prevent future regulations.
– AFP