Trump Dismisses AI Safety Fears as ‘Hoax,’ Rejects Calls for Guardrails

President Donald Trump on Monday dismissed growing warnings about artificial intelligence safety as a ‘hoax’ and rejected calls for government guardrails, saying the only control needed is a ‘strong and smart’ president.

In a series of posts on Truth Social, Trump wrote that ‘AI taking over the World, destroying Humanity, and all other things bad, is a HOAX’ [0†L18-L19]. He later added that the only ‘guardrail’ necessary is a ‘STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT’ and said the United States already has that ‘in spades’ [8†L15-L17].

Trump also alleged a ‘SICK conspiracy’ against AI and data centers, claiming that ‘Conspiracy Theorists, Treasonists, Traitors, and Leakers’ should beware [8†L30-L34]. He said the administration has ‘tremendous CRIMINAL and REGULATORY power over these companies’ and would continue to use it [8†L30-L31].

During a live interview at the All In Summit in Los Angeles on Monday, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang received a phone call from the president. On speakerphone, Trump told the audience that ‘the robots will not be taking over’ and that ‘the whole thing is a hoax’ [6†L10-L15]. He also said the United States ‘cannot afford to lose’ the AI race to China [8†L32-L33].

The remarks came after Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei published an essay on Saturday calling for the AI industry to ‘slow the pace’ of frontier development to allow safety measures to catch up [8†L25-L28]. Trump responded directly to Amodei, saying the CEO was ‘pretending to be a perfect little angel’ [8†L22-L24].

Amodei’s essay followed the resignation of prominent AI safety researcher Jacob Coxton from Anthropic on Sept. 8. Coxton wrote on X that the people building AI ‘earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade’ [0†L28-L29]. His statement prompted an industrywide response, including a lengthy essay from Amodei that acknowledged many of the concerns [0†L30-L34].

Anthropic co-founder Jack Clark pushed back against Trump’s dismissal during an appearance on Fox News on Sunday, saying the safety concerns were based on ‘just common sense’ [12†L42-L46]. Evan Hubinger, Anthropic’s alignment science lead, said he believes the probability of AI causing human extinction within the next decade is more than 10% [12†L7-L9].

Vice President JD Vance also weighed in, saying he feels ‘a little bit weird’ about frontier AI companies asking the government to regulate them. ‘It feels a little bit to me like a bit of a Trojan Horse,’ Vance said [6†L23-L26].

Trump’s comments are part of a broader push by his administration to frame AI development as a geopolitical and economic priority. In Ireland over the weekend, he said ‘Whoever wins AI, wins’ [5†L12-L13]. He has warned that communities rejecting AI data centers will end up ‘backwards and poor’ [8†L37-L38].

A recent NBC News Decision Desk poll found that 70% of adults said they were more worried about AI than excited about it. Nearly 70% said they somewhat or strongly oppose building AI data centers in their areas, including 57% of Republican voters [8†L39-L44].

Trump has been an AI accelerationist from the start, but his latest remarks mark a sharp escalation in the administration’s opposition to regulation [7†L7-L9]. He has recast the safety debate in personal and partisan terms, casting the warnings as part of a ‘Doomer Industrial Complex’ orchestrated by political opponents [7†L19-L23].

The debate continues as AI safety researchers, industry leaders, and lawmakers press for greater oversight. Trump remains firm in his position, calling the fears a hoax and insisting that American AI dominance is the priority.