Donald Trump has rejected calls to slow artificial-intelligence development, arguing that America’s lead over China must be protected: “Whoever wins AI wins.”
Trump was asked whether increasingly powerful AI should face tighter regulation or slower development.
He said the United States is ahead of China and warned against sacrificing that advantage.
Trump accepted that some guardrails could be appropriate, while dismissing many of the darker predictions surrounding AI as scenarios that will not happen.
His intervention puts him directly against a growing push for caution.
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has called for frontier capability development to slow.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has said catastrophic risks in the high-single-digit percentages would be unacceptable.
Barack Obama is urging Democrats to make AI governance a major political issue.
Trump’s answer is competition.
“Whoever wins AI wins.”
THE RACE THAT MAY BE TOO DANGEROUS TO SLOW
The disagreement creates a problem neither side can easily escape.
If America deliberately slows frontier development while China continues, Washington risks surrendering its technological lead.
If both continue accelerating, increasingly capable systems may be deployed before the safety problems identified by their own developers are resolved.
Both risks can exist simultaneously.
That leaves a choice with enormous consequences:
Is the greater danger losing the AI race, or winning a race whose finish line we don’t fully understand?
Sources
Reuters: Trump dismisses AI fears and prioritises U.S. leadership
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