Donald Trump completely rejected the growing warnings about artificial intelligence’s risk to humanity in a bonkers social media post where he touted how smart he was.
“The only control or ‘guardrails’ that AI needs is a STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT, and the U.S.A. has that, in spades!” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “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’—and we will continue to do so!”
The president was referencing Anthroipic’s Dario Amodei, who warned about the risks of AI and called for the industry to slow the pace of building the technology in a post. Others chimed in, saying they agreed.
But Trump didn’t reject AI guardrails just because of his own intelligence. He went on to suggest Amodei and others sounding the alarms were “traitors.”
“We already have 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,” Trump wrote. “WHOEVER WINS AI, WINS! We are leading China, and all others, and will continue to do so. Conspiracy Theorists, Treasonists, Traitors, and Leakers, BEWARE!”
The president’s post comes as multiple experts were sounding the AI alarm. OpenAI’s Sam Altman addressed concerns with a post on X early Monday.
“There are two ways AI progress could go very badly and that we must avoid. First, we could lose control of the future to AI,” he wrote. “This is unacceptable; we are unapologetically on Team Humanity, and AI must always serve people. To ensure that, we need ways to ensure that alignment and safety techniques stay ahead of progress in model capabilities.”
He also added: “Second, we could end up in a world with too much concentration of power. If an extraordinarily powerful AI is used by one person or company to impress their worldview onto everyone else, the results could be extremely dystopian.”
It came after Amodei wrote an essay about a three-step plan to pace AI development and balance growth with safety.
“We must slow the pace at which we improve the capabilities of AI models. Progress will still seem fast, and we must make wise use of the time we gain,” he wrote.
Amodei warned that he was concerned about the dramatic advance of AI, including its ability to build the “next generation of AI.”
“This dynamic is called recursive self-improvement, and it is starting to happen across the industry, including at Anthropic, as we and others have described. Left unchecked, it could outrun our ability to understand and control these systems, and so must be pursued very carefully, if at all,” he wrote.
He also pointed to the so-called “OpenAI-Hugging Face incident,” where AI agents carried out cybersecurity attacks on unrelated targets they were not asked to attack.
“It’s easy to dismiss this incident because no one was hurt and the economic damage was minimal, but in my opinion, a swarm that possessed greater capabilities but a similar level of misalignment could have caused catastrophic damage,” he wrote.
Both Democratic and Republican lawmakers have expressed concern about AI and data centers as the conversation heats up about regulations around the industry.
But the president has even pushed back against members of his own party. He recently rejected concerns about building data centers in communities, blasting “stupid people” for not wanting them.
Asked about the alarms being sounded over AI on Sunday, Trump told reporters on Air Force One while returning from Ireland that he was hearing directly from tech leaders, but insisted he was not downplaying concern.
“No, we are not downplaying, but you know it’s going to be more good than bad by a lot,” Trump declared.
The president, 80, was asked whether he used AI himself, and he responded, “I use AI, yeah.”
When he was asked how he used it, Trump said simply, “You can use AI for a lot of things,” but he did not elaborate.
