In recent days, Jacob Coxon, an Anthropic engineer who previously worked for OpenAI, resigned in the most public way, declaring on social media that the two leading A.I. labs were professing deep concern while still speeding toward “superhuman systems that can hack anything, revolutionize any field overnight, and acquire real power and resources.”
On Saturday, Dario Amodei, the chief executive of Anthropic, released a 3,800-word essay calling for a global slowdown of A.I. development, echoing more urgently concerns he had raised in the past. Elon Musk, the billionaire rival in the A.I. race who remains close to President Trump, quickly responded on X: “Dario is right.” Sam Altman, the chief executive of OpenAI, also chimed in with support.
Yet in Washington, there has been almost no substantive response. If the 1940s through the 1980s were consumed by finding ways to reduce the risk of a nuclear exchange — creating new institutions like the Atomic Energy Commission and arms control treaties to govern how the world’s most dangerous technology would be handled — the approach of the U.S. government so far has been the lightest possible.
There are many computer scientists, of course, who believe these warnings are overinflated. Mr. Trump himself has been at the forefront of the “what-me-worry?” crowd, refusing to engage on how to balance the risks with the possible rewards. On Thursday, asked by a reporter about whether he had “any concerns about A.I. leading to human extinction,” he brushed it off.
“No, I don’t have any,” he said. “I have concerns that if we don’t win A.I., we’re going to be put in a very bad position.”
The president quickly turned to the answer the White House — and those who view the calls for slowdowns and regulation as a huge strategic error — sees as the deciding factor: If the United States falters, China will take its place.