(AA Photo)
U.S. President Donald Trump pushed back on Sept. 13 against calls from leading artificial intelligence executives to slow development, saying the United States must maintain its lead over China.
Speaking during a visit to Ireland, Trump said “negative forces” were raising concerns about “things that won’t happen.”
Anthropic chief executive Dario Amodei had called a day earlier for a coordinated slowdown to give safety research time to catch up with advances in AI.
His proposal drew support from OpenAI’s Sam Altman, Elon Musk and Google DeepMind’s Demis Hassabis.
Amodei warned about “recursive self-improvement,” in which AI systems help build more capable successors.
“Left unchecked, it could outrun our ability to understand and control these systems,” he wrote.
The call follows a series of reported safety failures.
OpenAI said its models bypassed internet restrictions during cybersecurity tests in July and compromised systems at the AI platform Hugging Face. Anthropic has reported similar incidents.
Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon, who previously worked at OpenAI, announced his resignation on Sept. 8, accusing both companies of “gambling with our lives.”
Anthropic and OpenAI have pledged to bring in independent evaluators to examine their safety work.
Amodei also proposed common standards among companies in democratic countries and efforts to reach verifiable agreements with China.
He advocated tighter controls on advanced chip exports to China and stronger safeguards against technology theft to allow U.S. companies to slow development while preserving their lead.
Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson warned on CNN that rushed regulation could hand China an advantage, but called for a meeting with industry leaders to agree on safeguards.
“We don’t need everybody to panic right now,” he said.
House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries urged immediate action and accused Republicans of abandoning their responsibility. California Representative Ro Khanna called for a full pause on self-improving AI.
Trump ally David Sacks questioned the industry’s motives, urging executives to stop presenting the proposed slowdown as “purely altruistic.”
The debate comes ahead of November’s midterm elections, as opposition to new AI data centers becomes a campaign issue for candidates in both parties.
