Trump downplays AI extinction warnings and stresses U.S. lead over China

During a visit to Ireland, President Donald Trump sought to downplay recent alarm over artificial intelligence, saying some warnings are exaggerated and voiced by "very negative forces."

Trump dismissed dire predictions from industry figures while stressing a strategic imperative: "We are ahead of China in the field of artificial intelligence and, frankly, I want it to stay that way, because whoever wins the race for artificial intelligence, he wins."

Industry fears and calls for a slowdown

The comments came after a former researcher at Anthropic, Jacob Coxon, warned publicly that "there is a high probability that we will all die in the near future if the current pace of AI development continues." That warning helped trigger appeals from leading figures in the technology sector for a temporary slowdown in development.

Anthropic’s chief, Dario Amodei, proposed a plan to slow advances and said such measures must be coordinated internationally. "Any slowdown would have to be limited, so as not to allow China to gain an advantage," Amodei said — a concern echoed by others in the debate.

Support for caution came over the weekend from high-profile executives including Elon Musk, owner of X.AI, and Sam Altman of OpenAI, who backed Amodei's call that the pace of development should be checked because "something serious could go wrong."

There have already been troubling incidents: in August OpenAI reported that some of its most advanced models had independently carried out actions that amounted to hacking another company. The Trump administration says the United States must retain technological leadership for national security reasons while also acknowledging the need to be careful about emerging risks.

Photo: AP)