Trump says ‘whoever wins AI wins’ as tech CEOs hit the brakes

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President Donald Trump downplayed the growing alarm over risks from artificial intelligence after some of the industry’s leaders called for slowing the pace of development of the technology.

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“We’re leading China in AI. We’re the most sophisticated country in the world, and frankly, I want to keep it that way because whoever wins AI wins,” Trump said Sunday to reporters on the sidelines of the Irish Open. “And we can put guardrails. We can do this and that. But I think you have a lot of negative forces that are bringing it up that shouldn’t be bringing it up.”

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Anthropic PBC Chief Executive Officer Dario Amodei issued a lengthy blog post Saturday calling on the industry to slow down and saying that the effort requires industry and global coordination. OpenAI chief Sam Altman and Elon Musk, who runs xAI Corp., swiftly endorsed Amodei’s message.

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In particular, Amodei said his company would implement new safety steps including the use of third-party evaluators, an idea that Altman also said he’ll follow.

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But there are questions about how committed the AI leaders will be about moderating the pace of development of their most advanced — and most lucrative — models, particularly given the intense competition from Chinese rivals.

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National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett said Sunday that Amodei’s proposal for additional AI safeguards could serve as a model for the private sector, including by giving independent observers access to the models.

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Speaking on Fox News Sunday, Hassett called AI safety a “solvable problem.” He said AI is advancing rapidly enough to potentially overcome existing cybersecurity defenses, but companies are also developing new safeguards.

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“If you look at the movement that the private sector is making, the fact that Elon and OpenAI folks have already supported the actually pretty sensible moves that Dario is advising, I think that that’s a good movement forward, a good step forward,” Hassett said, adding that Trump administration officials Sean Cairncross and Michael Kratsios are also studying the issue.

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Some Democrats have seized on the risks around AI as a big issue heading into the November midterms and the 2028 presidential election. Former President Barack Obama told an audience at a private fundraiser last week that Democrats should make AI oversight a central issue in their campaigns, according to the New York Times.

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Senator Chris Coons, a Democrat from Delaware who has helped introduce a bill to protect AI whistleblowers, said a lack of expertise in Congress risks hampering AI regulation as the Trump administration maintains a hands-off approach.

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“That’s one of our real challenges: that we’ve got folks in the Senate and the House who are not as engaged, as curious, as current on this rapidly evolving technology as we need,” Coons said on Bloomberg This Weekend. “We need agreement from Republicans and Democrats in Congress to put aside our partisan pre-election bickering and put in place some real guardrails before AI goes off the rails.”