President Trump called into a live tech event and told the crowd that fears about AI destroying humanity are a “hoax,” even as the founders of the world’s top AI companies keep warning otherwise.
Quick Take
- Trump phoned into a tech industry event and dismissed AI existential fears as a “hoax,” repeating language he has used since 2024.
- He tied his stance to global competition, saying the U.S. is beating China in AI and “whoever wins AI wins.”
- Anthropic’s Dario Amodei, OpenAI’s Sam Altman, and other CEOs have called for a slowdown and outside safety checks.
- Trump adviser David Sacks argues current law already covers AI harms and new rules could block smaller companies from competing.
- Pew polling shows most Americans distrust the government to regulate AI well, whether it moves too fast or too slow.
Trump Repeats “Hoax” Claim During Surprise Call
President Trump surprised attendees at a tech event by phoning in and blasting warnings about AI’s dangers. He repeated a line he has used before, calling the idea that “AI taking over the world, destroying humanity and all other things bad” a “hoax”. He has used similar wording in public remarks and social media posts going back to 2024.
Trump linked his dismissal of AI fears to a bigger goal: beating China. He said the United States is already ahead in AI development and argued that “whoever wins AI wins” the larger global contest. He called people pushing for a slowdown “negative forces” working against American progress.
Adviser Says Existing Laws Are Enough
David Sacks, Trump’s AI adviser, backed the president’s approach in a CBS News interview. Sacks said the panic around AI is “overly dramatic” and argued that product-liability and criminal laws already apply to AI harms. He warned that new AI-specific rules could raise costs and block smaller companies from competing with giants already in the market.
Sacks also said leading AI companies have their own reasons to move carefully. He argued firms like OpenAI and Anthropic face pressure from customers who want reliable products, giving them a built-in reason to control their own pace without government orders. Trump has paired this hands-off approach with praise for AI as an economic tool, saying he used it to help write a speech and calling it a “superpower”.
Tech CEOs Warn of Serious Risk
Trump’s dismissal runs against public warnings from the very people building these systems. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei called for a global slowdown, writing that companies must “slow the pace” of AI capability gains so safety work can catch up. He also pushed for independent auditors to check company safety claims.
OpenAI’s Sam Altman has made similar calls. He backed the idea of an international agency to watch over the most powerful AI systems and said he worries about the government doing too little, not too much, to regulate AI. Altman has warned that AI progress could go “very badly” if control ends up concentrated in too few hands.
Public Trust in Government Remains Low
Polling suggests most Americans share the concern that Washington is not moving fast enough. A Pew Research Center survey found both the public and AI experts worry more that regulation will fall short than that it will go too far. The same survey found 62% of the public and 53% of AI experts have little or no confidence the government can regulate AI effectively.
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That distrust cuts across party lines. Brookings research found that people in the U.S. and U.K. trust neither tech companies nor governments to manage AI risks on their own, even as most support some form of regulation. Congress has held repeated hearings on AI oversight, showing lawmakers see the issue as unresolved even as Trump’s team argues current rules are sufficient.
An Unsettled Fight Over Risk and Speed
The clash boils down to which risks count as real. Trump’s “hoax” label lumps together doomsday scenarios with smaller, already-documented problems like deepfakes and fraud, without drawing a clear line between them. That makes his claim hard to test, while the tech leaders warning of danger point to specific concerns about losing human control over powerful systems.
Neither side has offered hard proof settling the debate. There are no public safety audits confirming AI cannot cause catastrophic harm, and no data showing exactly what economic cost the U.S. would pay by slowing down. Voters are left watching a fight between a president promising speed and industry leaders who built the technology now urging caution.
Sources:
bbc.com, yahoo.com, theguardian.com, congress.gov, cato.org, onlinelibrary.wiley.com, tandfonline.com
