Trump claims AI poses no real risk

Trump claims AI poses no real risk — but even some of his allies disagree

Public and bipartisan pressure are mounting amid dire warnings from experts

Fresh warnings that artificial intelligence models could go rogue and wipe out the human race appear to have jolted some U.S. politicians into action, but not President Donald Trump.

In a flurry of posts to his Truth Social platform on Monday, Trump dismissed AI regulation as something that would drive the industry "into oblivion and bankruptcy" and claimed that the economic engine of AI "will not be stopped" while he is president.

"AI taking over the World, destroying Humanity, and all other things bad, is a HOAX," Trump declared in one post.

"The only control or 'guardrails' that AI needs is a STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT, and the U.S.A. has that, in spades!" he said in another.

Trump's posts come in response to dire predictions about the technology's potential risks and mounting calls from executives and researchers to rein in the industry.

Last week, engineer Jacob Coxon thrust AI safety into the public spotlight by announcing his resignation from his job with Anthropic in a social media post that warned: "The people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade."

Anthropic CEO calls for AI development to slow down

While Trump is the most powerful voice in Washington opposing calls to rein in AI, he is far from the only one.

More than 260 bills have been introduced in Congress containing provisions to address the risks from AI since 2021, yet only two have become law, according to the Brennan Center's AI legislation tracker.

However, experts in AI policy see some encouraging signs in the past few days that the political momentum could now be shifting in favour of regulation.

Chris MacKenzie, vice-president of communications at Americans for Responsible Innovation, a non-profit advocacy group in Washington focused on AI safety, says one of the biggest obstacles to regulation has long been the amount of money stacked against it.

"We have a lot of money on the other side of this issue, a lot of money and lobbyists who do not want to see AI regulations," MacKenzie told CBC News.

"They want innovation at full speed, no brakes."

But as the public outcry grows for Congress to take action and the issue becomes a campaign talking point in the U.S. midterm elections, MacKenzie says he's confident there will be some movement.

"At the moment, what we see is a real window of opportunity where lawmakers and the public are mobilized around these issues and there's a clear desire to pass guardrails that will protect people from AI's risks," he said.

One event that helped fuel that desire came in late July, when OpenAI revealed that hundreds of its AI agents had gone rogue by independently breaking out of their secure testing environment and hacking into the servers of Hugging Face, an online platform of AI development tools.

Warnings about the risks have accelerated in the past week, kicked off by Coxon's post stating that AI "could kill us all." They include:

While plenty of Democrats lined up on the weekend to call for stricter AI regulation, even a few prominent Republicans expressed openness to tighten oversight. They included Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and the party's candidate for the Senate in Michigan, Mike Rogers, a former chairman of Intel.

"I believe we must slow down development of AI in order to allow the government and its partners to catch up and put stricter protocols and guardrails in place," Rogers posted on X.

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With major AI companies and an increasing number of Republicans agreeing that something needs to be done, Trump will likely need to compromise, says Nita Farahany, a Duke University professor who studies the legal and social implications of emerging technologies.

"I think it's going to be hard for the president to stay in the camp of 'No, let's go full speed ahead,'" Farahany told CBC News.

"I think you're going to see a shift, probably within the next 72 hours, out of the White House about what their tune is going to be on these issues."

Trump decries critics of AI, saying they're 'negative forces' with exaggerated concerns

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Trump has long resisted AI regulation. Last December, he signed an order aimed at forcing states to drop their efforts at regulating the technology.

The top Republican in the U.S. House of Representatives, Speaker Mike Johnson, says Trump may meet with AI company executives at some point in the next two weeks, but he's making no promises about the outcome.

The meeting would be "a deliberate discussion about the responsibility of the companies to maintain safety, and what role, if any, the government has to play," Johnson told reporters on Capitol Hill on Monday.

One sign that regulating AI appeals across a wide range of the political spectrum is the eclectic list of people slated to attend the launch of the Pro-Human Assembly, a new coalition that says its mission is "charting a better path for AI."

Among the speakers at the event Tuesday in Washington: Steve Bannon, Trump's one-time chief of staff and a prominent MAGA voice, along with Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, a darling of the left.

Mike Crawley is a correspondent for CBC News, based in Washington. He began his career as a newspaper reporter in B.C., spent six years as a freelance journalist in various parts of Africa, then joined the CBC in 2005. Mike reported on Ontario politics for 15 years. He was born and raised in Saint John, N.B.