President Trump on Sunday downplayed concerns that AI could go rogue after several leaders in the tech industry called for putting the brakes on its development.
Speaking to reporters at his Doonbeg golf resort in Ireland, the president said the dire warnings about AI were exaggerated and that "negative forces" are making claims about things that won't happen.
"We're leading China in AI, we're the most sophisticated country in the world, and frankly, I want to keep it that way because whoever wins AI, wins," Trump said. "And we can put guardrails, we can do this and that. But I think you have a lot of negative forces that are bringing it up that shouldn't be bringing it up."
President Trump did not explain what he meant by "negative forces."
During an interview on CNN's State of the Union on Sunday, House Speaker Mike Johnson said there should not be a moratorium on the technology because "China will overlap us." Instead, Johnson said he would like for tech companies to take the lead creating safer AI.
"If Congress just races in and does some sort of emergency session to try to regulate AI, we will lose the race to China," the House Speaker said. "And that is a threat to every single American. So, we've got to have balance. We got to have steady hands at the wheel."
Trump's and Johnson's comments follow warnings from Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, who posted an essay online Saturday, calling for companies and governments to slow down how fast the capabilities of AI are improved. Amodei warned that humans can lose control of AI systems and there are also opportunities to use AI in cyberattacks and bioterrorism.
Amodei wrote that there should be international cooperation around AI development and that labs should embed third-party evaluators to report incidents and track safety practices. He said Anthropic would take those steps unilaterally.
On Saturday, tech leaders Elon Musk and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman both said in social media posts that they agree with Amodei's concerns. Altman also told Fortune Magazine in an interview released Saturday that he would delay OpenAI going public until at least 2027 because of safety concerns and that company officials have discussed pausing tests on the technology to make it safer.
David Sacks, co-chair of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, responded to Altman and Amodei on social media writing "go ahead."
"I don't see what you see in the lab," Sacks wrote on X on Sunday. "If the unreleased models are scary enough that you think you should slow down, I support your decision to be responsible."
But Sacks admonished tech leaders to "stop pretending you need anyone else's permission" to make such moves.
"Most of all, stop pretending the motivation to slow down is purely altruistic," he wrote. "You face massive product-liability exposure if your products enable a truly damaging cyberattack."
NPR's Shannon Bond contributed to this report.
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