Trump dismisses concerns over growing AI risks, rejects call to slow development, even as industry leaders agree on risk

US President Donald Trump has rejected calls to slow the pace of AI development despite warnings from Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman about growing risks. Elon Musk and US lawmakers have also urged stronger AI safeguards.

While top executives of two of the world's leading artificial intelligence (AI) companies have publicly acknowledged the risks associated with developing AI systems at a rapid pace and urged companies to slow down, US President Donald Trump on Sunday (local time) rejected the idea of slowing down in the race against China.

Trump denies slowing down AI pace amid increased risks

Addressing reporters during his trip to the Doonbeg golf course in Ireland, Trump said that while some "guardrails" were possible, Washington needed to retain its international leadership in the area, AFR reported.

He noted, "Look, we’re leading China in AI … and, frankly, I want to keep it that way, because whoever wins AI wins," and added, "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.”

The US President's remarks came after Anthropic Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Dario Amodei shared an essay on his X account over the weekend, warning about the risks.

Anthropic CEO warns of growing risks amid rapid AI development

In the essay, titled "We Must Pace the Frontier," Amodei listed both the advantages and disadvantages of developing artificial intelligence models. Amodei wrote, "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 cited two reasons for the change in his stance: first, AI systems are becoming increasingly capable of developing more advanced AI; and second, the OpenAI-Hugging Face incident, in which autonomous AI agents powered by an OpenAI model breached systems belonging to Hugging Face.

Swati Gandhi