President Donald Trump has dismissed mounting calls to slow or regulate artificial intelligence, portraying them as an obstacle to US competition with China. His position has opened a sharper divide with AI executives, researchers and Democratic lawmakers, who say safeguards are needed before more powerful systems are deployed.

Speaking to reporters in Ireland, Trump said the United States was ahead of China in AI and should remain so. “Whoever wins with AI, wins,” he said, while acknowledging that safeguards could be set but arguing that too many “negative forces” were raising concerns that would not materialize.¹ That framing puts technological rivalry at the center of the administration’s approach: regulation, in Trump’s view, risks handing an advantage to Beijing.

His later Truth Social posts went further, calling fears that AI could take over the world or destroy humanity a “HOAX” and alleging a “SICK conspiracy” against AI and data centers.² Trump also singled out Anthropic chief executive Dario Amodei, who has urged a coordinated slowdown to better understand the risks of increasingly capable models.

Amodei’s warning has drawn unusual public backing from rivals including OpenAI’s Sam Altman, xAI’s Elon Musk, Google DeepMind’s Demis Hassabis and Microsoft’s Satya Nadella. Their concern is not limited to speculative scenarios: advocates cite potential cyberattacks, bioterrorism, loss of control over AI systems and severe economic disruption. A former Anthropic and OpenAI researcher, Jacob Coxon, similarly argued that companies were focused more on outpacing one another than on developing systems responsibly.¹

The political response is divided as well. House Speaker Mike Johnson opposed an emergency AI moratorium, citing the need to prevent China from taking the lead, while Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries called on Congress to act urgently on AI safeguards.¹ International officials and industry leaders have added to the pressure for rules, but Trump maintains that a strong US president—not additional barriers—is the necessary check on the technology.²