Over the weekend, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei joined Elon Musk and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman in calling for a slowdown in the development of frontier AI models — just days after Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon announced that he was quitting his job, claiming that neither Anthropic nor his former employer OpenAI is “acting responsibly.”
The desire in Silicon Valley to pump the brakes is palpable. Following several hacking incidents this year, the threat of a rogue AI model wreaking havoc has grown from footnote-level what-if to an active topic of conversation at the highest levels of the industry.
But they now face a powerful opponent: president Donald Trump, who came out this weekend to decry the idea of an AI slowdown.
To Trump, the US is still locked in a bitter international race that seems to override any safety concerns for the 80-year-old head of state.
“We’re leading China in AI, we’re the most sophisticated country in the world, and frankly I want to keep it that way,” he said while attending a golf tournament, as quoted by The Washington Post.
Trump further dug in his heels in a deranged Truth Social post, accusing Amodei of acting like a “perfect little angel” and arguing the US already had “tremendous CRIMINAL and REGULATORY power over these companies!”
“There is a SICK conspiracy going on against AI and Data Centers, and the only one that is happy about it is China,” he added. “WHOEVER WINS AI, WINS! We are leading China, and all others, and will continue to do so.”
Much of his second presidency has been spent lauding the AI industry, brokering billion-dollar deals, and lowering regulatory barriers, such as Biden-era AI rules and environmental regulations, to appease company leaders.
But now that the threat of “misaligned” AI models coming after humanity is something experts are actively discussing almost as if it’s an inevitability, Trump’s AI-uber-alles narrative is quickly turning into a much harder sell.
Worse yet, the president is insinuating that there’s an underground movement conspiring against Silicon Valley — while seemingly failing to realize it’s the tech industry itself calling for more oversight.
“I think you have a lot of negative forces that are bringing it up that shouldn’t be bringing it up,” he told reporters at the golf tournament. “And they’re bringing up things that won’t happen.”
Naturally, it’s a stance Trump didn’t seem to be entirely beholden to. After all, he has a well-documented penchant to cave in when he encounters too much resistance on a topic.
“I’m not downplaying,” he later told White House reporters, as quoted by WaPo, referring to renewed calls by tech execs for a slowdown. “But it’s going to be more good than bad — by a lot.”
Meanwhile, politicians on the other side of the aisle are uniting in their calls for a slowdown or pause in AI development. The stakes are certainly there: it’s a subject that may end up influencing the upcoming midterm elections, perfectly dovetailing with the American people’s already strained relationship with data centers — construction projects wholly endorsed by the president.
More on AI slowdowns: OpenAI Halts AI Training on Advanced Model as It Detects Dark Signs Emerging
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