Trump Plays Down AI Oversight, Warns Against Ceding Race to China

President Donald Trump on Sunday played down the need for his administration to restrain the development of artificial intelligence, arguing that the United States must not surrender its lead to China and that prevailing in the global contest would itself help address the technology's risks.

Speaking to reporters during a weekend trip to Ireland, Trump acknowledged that some regulation might be warranted but offered no specifics. He attributed warnings that AI is advancing too quickly and with too little oversight to "negative forces" he did not name, even though several industry pioneers have voiced precisely such concerns.

"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, and they're bringing up things that won't happen," Trump said. "But whoever wins with AI wins."

The remarks came a day after Dario Amodei, chief executive of the AI company Anthropic, said the industry should slow its rapid development so that safety measures can catch up. Other technology leaders, including Elon Musk and OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman, publicly agreed with that position.

Asked whether the industry should decelerate or be regulated, Trump said the United States is ahead of China in AI development and that he wants to keep it that way. Chinese President Xi Jinping is due to visit the United States later in September for a meeting with Trump, and AI is expected to be among the topics they discuss.

AI has become a prominent election-year issue in the United States, as some of the country's largest companies build a national network of computing warehouses in small towns. Americans across the political spectrum have increasingly raised concerns about the loss of farmland and water supplies and about rising electricity bills. Trump has maintained his support for data centers even as members of both parties distance themselves from them and many communities seek to block them.

Former President Barack Obama, a Democrat, said his party should make AI a campaign issue, calling for concrete plans on safety, on protecting children and on the economic consequences of job displacement. He spoke last week at an event with House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries, according to a transcript released by his office.

Kevin Hassett, director of the National Economic Council at the White House, said he expects meetings this week involving administration officials who oversee cyber and science and technology policy to discuss next steps. Trump could also meet with members of Congress, some of whom have been sounding alarms about the pace of AI development. "I think the president wants to hear from them as well," Hassett said.

House Speaker Mike Johnson acknowledged the need for "some guardrails, some safety measures" so that AI "doesn't run away." Like Trump, however, he said the United States must not "lose our edge in the global competition on this with China because that would be a national security threat." Johnson said industry leaders should be summoned for "one big meeting and work this out together in the same room," adding that he has discussed the matter with Trump and believes such a gathering should be the next step. "But we don't need everybody to panic right now," he said.

Jeffries criticized Republican leaders for allowing members to return to their districts for the final part of September. He said Congress should act now to slow the pace of development, as the chief executives have acknowledged, in order to protect the American people and ensure AI proceeds safely. Action on AI will be a "high priority" when House Democrats meet as a group on Tuesday.

Neither Johnson nor Jeffries outlined concrete steps Congress might take. Lawmakers broadly agree that more guardrails are needed, but even narrow attempts to impose rules have collapsed over the years, reflecting congressional reluctance to regulate the technology industry.

Jacob Coxon, a former Anthropic employee who resigned over AI concerns and has publicly aired his fears, argued for international rules alongside industry self-regulation. He said he has grown worried that AI models could soon acquire super capabilities exceeding human control. "You're building a human-level or superhuman-level mind, without understanding what it wants, or thinks, or the way it thinks," he said.

Amid fierce global competition for AI dominance, Coxon also urged cooperation between the United States and China, the two leading countries in the field, to slow down and address safety. He said he hopes people in China examining the same problems will reach the same conclusion that the technology must be developed in a measured manner, and that cooperation on some form of mutual slowing should be feasible. Otherwise, he warned, the two countries risk running the same race, which could be equally dangerous.

Tech founder and investor David Sacks responded to the AI leaders' calls for regulation with a social media post challenging them. Sacks, co-chairman of a White House advisory council on science and technology, said Amodei and others are the ones setting the pace of development and have the power to slow it themselves. "The easiest way not to build superintelligence is for you to agree not to build it," Sacks wrote.