Trump says he has no concerns AI could cause human extinction

President Trump told reporters leaving Dallas on Thursday that he has no concerns AI could cause human extinction, saying instead that his worry is the US losing the AI race to China, which he put at roughly a year ahead per Bloomberg. The remarks came three days after Jacob Coxon, a 27-year-old British researcher who says he spent three years across Anthropic and OpenAI, resigned publicly on X, warning the industry is "racing straight to self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives." Anthropic head of alignment Evan Hubinger backed Coxon and estimated a greater than 10% probability that advanced AI causes human extinction within the next decade, while Bridgewater co-chief investment officer Greg Jensen told Bloomberg's Odd Lots podcast that AI will likely kill people before regulators act and floated a two-year window for serious harm absent intervention.

Trump told reporters he has no fear AI could wipe out humanity, only that the US might lose the AI race to China. Days earlier, an Anthropic researcher quit warning that his own industry is gambling with people's lives. Asked by reporters as he left Dallas on Thursday whether AI's potential to cause human extinction worried him, President Trump gave a flat answer. "No, I don't have any," he said. Then he told them what actually keeps him up at night: "I have concerns that if we don't win AI, we're going to be put in a very bad position." According to Bloomberg, he put the US lead over China at roughly a year, calling that "a lot." That's the whole doctrine in two sentences. Extinction risk, dismissed. The race against Beijing, the priority. It's the first time a sitting president has weighed in directly on a debate that, until this week, mostly played out between AI researchers on X and in closed-door briefings. A researcher who wouldn't stay quiet The timing is what makes it land differently. Three days before Trump's remarks, Jacob Coxon, a 27-year-old British researcher who says he spent three years working across both Anthropic and OpenAI, posted on X that the two companies are more focused on beating each other, and China, than on safety. He said the industry is "racing straight to self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives," and resigned to say so publicly. According to the Washington Post, his post reignited a debate that had been simmering for months. Evan Hubinger, Anthropic's head of alignment, didn't distance the company from Coxon. He backed him. Hubinger estimated a greater than 10% probability that advanced AI causes human extinction within the next decade, an extraordinary number for an employee of a company still racing to build the very systems he's describing. CNBC reported that more than a dozen current and former OpenAI and Anthropic staff have now called for a slowdown. Trump’s AI memo redraws the defense market https://startupfortune.com/trumps-ai-memo-redraws-the-defense-market/ Trump’s NSPM-11 accelerates military AI adoption while limiting vendors’ ability to disable or alter deployed systems without government approval. The memo turns the Anthropic-Pentagon dispute into a market-wide warning for AI labs chasing classified defense work. - how does Trump's AI memo affect defense contractors https://startupfortune.com/trumps-ai-memo-redraws-the-defense-market/ - Pentagon AI procurement policy changes under Trump administration https://startupfortune.com/trumps-ai-memo-redraws-the-defense-market/ Wall Street sees the same clock ticking This isn't confined to AI labs. Greg Jensen, co-chief investment officer at Bridgewater Associates, told Bloomberg's Odd Lots podcast this week that AI will likely kill people before regulators do anything meaningful about it. "Until the AI starts killing people, unfortunately, history would suggest we're not going to do anything, but we are going to face that," Jensen said. He compared the current moment to February 2020, right before COVID-19 went from a distant news story to a global emergency, and floated a two-year window for something to go seriously wrong absent intervention. Jensen isn't a doomsayer with nothing at stake. He runs money for one of the largest hedge funds on earth, and his proposed fix, a tax on AI computing power to fund the transition and to offset an economy where his own firm's analysis says up to 18% of jobs could vanish within five years, is a policy position, not a warning cry. UK lawmakers have raised similar alarms in recent months. None of it has moved the White House. Trump's calculation is straightforward, and you can see the logic even if you don't buy the conclusion. Slowing down to address safety concerns costs time, and time is the one thing he says the US can't spare against China. The administration's approach so far, light-touch rules, no federal pause, has been built entirely around speed. That's a defensible bet if the extinction warnings are overblown. It's a catastrophic one if Hubinger's 10% is even in the right neighborhood. What's notable is who's making the case for caution. This isn't Luddite politicians or outside critics. It's the alignment lead at Anthropic, a company built explicitly on the premise that AI safety matters. It's a researcher who worked inside both frontier labs. It's a hedge fund co-CIO with billions under management telling a financial podcast that people will die before Washington acts. Frankly, that's a strange group of people for a president to simply wave off. Trump isn't wrong that China is racing hard, or that ceding ground has real costs. But dismissing the extinction warnings without engaging them, rather than explaining why the 10% estimate from Anthropic's own safety chief is wrong, is a bet the country is making without much of a public debate about the odds. For now, the labs keep building, the White House keeps its foot on the accelerator, and the researchers who actually work on these systems keep telling anyone who'll listen that the risk isn't hypothetical. Nobody in Washington has offered a counterargument yet, just a different priority. Also read: Over 70 UK Lawmakers Urge Andy Burnham to Ban Superintelligent AI https://startupfortune.com/over-70-uk-lawmakers-urge-andy-burnham-to-ban-superintelligent-ai/ • Indeed's CEO Says AI Broke Hiring, and His Fix Is More AI https://startupfortune.com/indeeds-ceo-says-ai-broke-hiring-and-his-fix-is-more-ai/ • China Telecom Says AI Agents Will Drive a Tenfold Jump in Compute Demand https://startupfortune.com/china-telecom-says-ai-agents-will-drive-a-tenfold-jump-in-compute-demand/ Trump is pulling AI companies closer to Washington https://startupfortune.com/trump-is-pulling-ai-companies-closer-to-washington/ President Trump is preparing to meet major AI company leaders to discuss possible federal stakes in the industry. The move could reshape how labs such as Anthropic and OpenAI compete for capital, contracts and political backing. - how Trump administration is reshaping AI industry policy https://startupfortune.com/trump-is-pulling-ai-companies-closer-to-washington/ - federal government strategy for controlling AI company profits https://startupfortune.com/trump-is-pulling-ai-companies-closer-to-washington/ This article is posted in AI News https://startupfortune.com/category/ai/ , check it out for more related stories. Join the discussion Open in the community → /community/ Almost there. Sign in and your reply posts straight away.