AI Leaders Are Calling for a Slowdown. Trump’s Team Says It’s on Them

As calls for artificial intelligence regulation intensify, US President Donald Trump’s team have made it clear that if lab leaders want to implement an industry-wide slowdown, they’re going to have to do it themselves.

Anthropic chief executive Dario Amodei called on the US government to regulate AI companies within a wider effort to slow the pace of the technology’s development in an essay published Saturday. The essay received rare endorsement from both OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman and Elon Musk, who owns chatbot Grok, following a week of intense debate about the technology’s threats to human safety. Microsoft chief executive officer Satya Nadella also called for pacing development.

Calls for AI slowdown and regulation have intensified after a number of researchers voiced major concerns in the last week about the speed of the technology’s advance. “AI progress is increasing,” former DeepMind researcher Rishub Jain told WIRED. “And as AI becomes more capable, it poses more risks.”

But David Sacks, co-chair of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, wrote on X, “If the unreleased models are scary enough that you think you should slow down, I support your decision to be responsible. But stop pretending you need anyone else’s permission. Stop pretending antitrust law has to be suspended so you can form a cartel … Most of all, stop pretending the motivation to slow down is purely altruistic.”

Amodei had requested the government enable competing AI companies to work together on standards without breaching antitrust law, either by participating in discussions or issuing a waiver for the companies involved. He also called for government assistance in establishing international coordination, including with the Chinese Communist Party, though critics wondered how effective this would be. “China is very unlikely to join a global agreement, as you know,” Sacks wrote.