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Trump rejects tech CEOs' call to slow AI, citing China race
Doonbeg, County Clare, IrelandPublished 14 Sep 2026
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The White House from Washington, DC / Wikimedia Commons, Public domain · source
In Doonbeg, Ireland, President Trump dismissed calls from Anthropic, OpenAI, and xAI to slow AI development as “negative forces” raising “things that won’t happen,” while saying the United States must stay ahead of China.
President Donald Trump, speaking Sunday at the Irish Open at his Doonbeg golf resort, rejected calls from leading AI CEOs to slow model development. Anthropic’s Dario Amodei had urged a paced frontier; Sam Altman, Elon Musk, and Demis Hassabis backed him. Trump said the U.S. leads China and “whoever wins AI, wins,” while allowing that guardrails were possible. Later he said he was “not downplaying” the risks. White House adviser David Sacks told the labs they could slow down without new rules; Speaker Mike Johnson called for a meeting, not a moratorium.
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Trump dismisses calls for AI slowdown from leading tech CEOs
Published 13 Sep 2026 accessed 14 Sep 2026
Facts
After Coxon’s resignation, multiple US lawmakers called for legislation to control AI development.
Sacks said demanding a preferred regulatory framework as the price of slowing down will look like blackmail of the public and the political system.
Opinion
No opinion marked.
AI CEOs say they need to slow the pace of development. But will they?
Published 14 Sep 2026 accessed 14 Sep 2026
Facts
Anthropic researchers have repeatedly warned that AI could kill all of humanity by 2030.
Amodei’s proposal was titled “We Must Pace the Frontier.”
AI startups face pressure to release more powerful products ahead of upcoming trillion-dollar public offerings.
OpenAI shut down a superalignment team in 2024 that studied long-term AI risks.
Bedoya said antitrust law does prevent AI companies from organizing to block cheaper rivals.
The Trump administration has often framed AI development as a zero-sum contest against China.
Vice President JD Vance said last year the future of AI was not going to be won by hand-wringing about safety.
House Speaker Mike Johnson said Congress would not lead the charge on regulating AI safety and put the responsibility on AI companies.
Opinion
Critics and researchers allege Amodei’s proposal is an attempt to preempt stricter government regulation and keep industry power.
The US federal government is committed to a global AI arms race.
Previous proposed AI legislation has wilted under intense, well-financed corporate lobbying.
The CEOs’ warnings raise questions about whether the industry will actually slow the race to advance AI.
The Guardian says many hurdles to comprehensive AI regulation remain the same as before last week’s warnings from a young Anthropic researcher.
David Sacks and Alvaro Bedoya suggested the proposal amounted to regulatory capture that would benefit current industry leaders.
Critics see Amodei’s proposal as the industry picking its own evaluators instead of facing intensive government regulators.
Rahm Emanuel said a CEO or industry asking to be regulated has never happened.
The Guardian says AI companies have provided little transparency into how their models operate and spent millions lobbying for favorable legislation.
Emanuel said Amodei’s letter is an admission the industry is driving blind.
Critics say the industry’s narrative has allowed AI to essentially govern itself.
The Guardian says AI firms have fluctuated between warning of apocalyptic harm and promising utopian prosperity.
Alex Bores warned that the AI lobby often seeks to undermine legislation while claiming to support regulation.
The Guardian says the proposal runs up against Trump’s vows to make the US the dominant AI superpower regardless of safety concerns.
Emanuel said it looks like President Trump nodded off again.
Bores posted that people who want real AI regulation should not fall for the industry’s games.
AI CEOs call for industry slowdown
Published 13 Sep 2026 accessed 14 Sep 2026
Facts
Altman said OpenAI is delaying plans for an expected blockbuster public listing.
Amodei left OpenAI to co-found Anthropic to take a more safety-focused approach.
OpenAI said last month it was temporarily slowing development of its leading-edge models after the Hugging Face hack.
US and Chinese officials are expected to meet this month to talk about AI safety.
Anthropic is a financial supporter of NPR.
Opinion
Bond said fears have grown that AI is advancing toward a point where it might no longer be governable by humans.
Bond said Coxon argued the labs are not acting responsibly and many in the industry agree.
Bond said there has not been progress on that global-standards front so far.
Bond said the timing question is especially true of Dario Amodei.
Trump brushes off AI doom predictions as ‘things that won’t happen,’ says US must push ahead: ‘Whoever wins AI, wins.’
Published 13 Sep 2026 accessed 14 Sep 2026
Facts
Coxon’s warning last Tuesday garnered some 170 million views on X.
Some Republicans have pushed for a more active government role overseeing AI development.
Sacks said the CEOs should stop pretending the motivation to slow down is purely altruistic.
Sacks said China is very unlikely to join a global agreement.
Bernie Sanders demanded a US moratorium on data centers and called on Trump to cut an AI truce with China.
Rep. Ruben Gallego called for a select committee in Congress to tackle AI.
Jeffries said Democrats began a Commission on Artificial Intelligence last December.
Earlier this year the Trump administration intervened after Anthropic’s Mythos model raised fears it could exploit cybersecurity vulnerabilities.
Trump has called AI bigger than the internet and highlighted its potential in medicine.
Opinion
The New York Post says Trump contended apocalyptic AI predictions are overblown.
The New York Post said Sacks accused Amodei and Altman of a publicity stunt.
Gallego said once AI becomes fully dangerous it will not care whether someone is Chinese or American.
Gallego said Congress cannot wait three years and must regulate AI now.
Gallego said AI is unlike any technology we have seen before.
Trump downplays the need to check AI development and says he doesn’t want to cede edge to China
Published 13 Sep 2026 accessed 14 Sep 2026
Facts
Asked later Sunday if he was minimizing AI risks, Trump said he was not downplaying them.
Trump said artificial intelligence is going to be more good than bad, by a lot.
Former President Barack Obama said Democrats should make AI a campaign issue.
Neither Johnson nor Jeffries provided concrete steps about what Congress might do.
AP says even narrow attempts at AI rules have fallen apart over the years.
Jeffries criticized Republican leaders for sending members back to their districts for the final part of September.
Coxon urged the US and China to cooperate to slow down and address safety.
Hassett, Johnson, Coxon, and Jeffries appeared on Sunday television shows.
Opinion
Johnson said everybody does not need to panic right now.
Coxon said otherwise we risk running the same race with China, which could be equally dangerous.
Trump rejects AI slowdown days after CEOs called for it
Published 14 Sep 2026 accessed 14 Sep 2026
Facts
On Thursday, leaving Dallas, Trump dismissed extinction fears and put the American lead over China at about a year.
OpenAI’s chief scientist said last week that no lab has solved alignment well enough to keep scaling at maximum speed.
In July, 1,134 lab employees signed a letter asking the government to build the means to pace development.
In May the administration began underwriting AI exports through the Export-Import Bank, drawing on more than $100 billion of unused lending capacity.
In Beijing in May, Trump left saying he and Xi had discussed AI guardrails and nothing was signed.
Opinion
The Next Web says the administration’s spending says what the president’s remarks do not.
The Next Web says the companies asking to slow down are the companies the export programme was built to speed up.