Trump and Mike Johnson think the AI industry is overreacting

President Donald Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson pushed back on calls from Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, OpenAI's Sam Altman, Elon Musk, and Alphabet's Demis Hassabis to slow AI development, arguing a pause could let China outpace the US. Trump told the Financial Times, "Look, we're leading China in AI ... and, frankly, I want to keep it that way, because whoever wins AI, wins," while Johnson told CNN's Jake Tapper that rushing restrictions on AI development could be a "national security threat" and warned, "If Congress just races in and does some sort of emergency session to try and regulate AI, we will lose the race to China.

Yesterday, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei published a lengthy open letter /ai-artificial-intelligence/994337/anthropic-ceo-slow-down-ai-development saying it was time to “pace the frontier” and slow down AI development. OpenAI’s Sam Altman https://x.com/sama/status/2098811563415150910 and Elon Musk https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2098789109980332057 both agreed, publicly voicing their support on X. Even Alphabet’s Demis Hassabis offered tentative support https://x.com/demishassabis/status/2098909516582490602 for Amodei’s proposal. Trump and Mike Johnson think the AI industry is overreacting The Republicans fear slowing down AI development could give China the edge. Donald Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson, however, seem to think the AI executives are being overreactive https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/trump-defends-white-houses-light-touch-on-ai-regulation-c4ed2488 and fear that a pause could lead to China outpacing the US in the AI race. According to the Financial Times https://www.ft.com/content/cae60732-f929-4735-a627-db8c14e7c7ed , Trump said “Look, we’re leading China in AI ... and, frankly, I want to keep it that way, because whoever wins AI, wins.” Johnson echoed those sentiments https://www.instagram.com/reels/DdO QnLgiHs/ on CNN , telling Jake Tapper that rushing to place restrictions on AI development could be a “national security threat.” He urged people not to panic. “If Congress just races in and does some sort of emergency session to try and regulate AI, we will lose the race to China.” Follow topics and authors from this story to see more like this in your personalized homepage feed and to receive email updates.