President Donald Trump on Monday called Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang during a company all-hands meeting and gave another full-throated defense of artificial intelligence after Huang put the call on speakerphone.
Trump characterized concerns about AI safety as a “hoax,” while telling Huang that the U.S. had to beat China in AI innovation and development.
“The robots will not be taking over. The AI will not be taking over the rest of the world. The whole thing is a hoax,” Trump said, suggesting that critics are “just playing right into the hands of a lot of people that don’t want to see it happen. That could be political people, that could also be China.”
Trump also lauded politically unpopular data centers, calling them “great” and saying they make people and states “wealthy.”
“It’s the oil of the next 20, 25 years, it’s bigger than the internet and AI, you know, much more so,” he said, while adding that people “have to be a little careful” and do things “prudently.”
A video of Trump’s call, posted on X, was reposted by the Trump War Room account, which is associated with a Trump-aligned PAC. The call is also included in a podcast that Huang was recording at the time.
Nvidia said it had no comment on Huang’s exchange with Trump or whether they will be meeting soon to discuss these issues.
Trump’s comments to Nvidia, one of the world’s biggest manufacturers of AI chips and hardware, come as AI leaders have called for slowing down development of the technology.
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei wrote in an essay over the weekend that AI development needed safeguards, which was quickly endorsed by Tesla CEO Elon Musk and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, among others. It came after last week researchers at leading AI companies stepped down from their jobs and spoke out over safety concerns, some describing them as an existential threat to humanity.
Former President Barack Obama urged Democrats last week to prioritize the development of an AI agenda. Trump, however, has firmly stood by his support for AI development. In a flurry of social media posts Monday, Trump described AI concerns as a “SICK conspiracy” and a “hoax.”
During the Nvidia phone call, Trump said he assumed Huang was on the same page as him regarding AI development; Huang said they were.
“We’re going to make sure that everybody wins in the AI race in America. Every industry, every company, every state, every people,” he told Trump during their call.
The Nvidia CEO, who helped persuade Trump last year to not send National Guard troops to San Francisco, sits on Trump’s council of science and technology advisers. He has lobbied lawmakers to allow sales of Nvidia around the world, which lawmakers have said could advantage China and undercut U.S. leadership in technology.
His conversation with Trump came as House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., who had been urged by House Democrats to end recess early so the lower chamber could take legislative action regarding AI safety, said this week that industry leaders should be the ones taking the lead on safety.
Johnson said Monday that Trump would call a meeting with AI leaders. A source familiar with the matter told NBC News that a meeting between Trump and the leaders was “in the works,” but no clear timing had been nailed down.