Technology and Science15 September, 20263 min read
Trump Dismisses AI Doomsday Fears as Hoax After Jensen Huang, Dario Amodei Clash
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Trump called Jensen Huang onstage, dismissing AI doomsday fears as a hoax. Huang argued against new AI regulations, urging safety via engineering and market forces.
Dreamforce showdown
Dreamforce’s opening keynote Tuesday became a public airing of the AI industry’s fight over whether development needs to slow down, with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang urging for pushing AI development at full speed minutes after Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei repeated his case for slowing down the development of AI.
On Sept. 12, Amodei published a 3,800-word open letter online laying out a plan to slow down and pace the development of AI, and other AI leaders including Sam Altman and Elon Musk agreed with parts of the letter.
The debate also spilled into politics and markets, with AFP reporting that US President Donald Trump dismissed fears that artificial intelligence could wipe out humanity, repeatedly calling them a hoax and rejecting global calls to put guardrails around the fast-moving technology.
AFP said Trump compared the fears of AI taking control to warnings about climate change, which he has previously dismissed in the face of scientific evidence, and to investigations in his first term into links to Russia.
In the same AFP account, Trump framed the only guardrails necessary as a “STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT.”
Trump calls Huang
AFP reported that Trump’s pushback came in a screed of six social media posts on Monday, while Al Jazeera described a surprise call in which Trump interrupted a live event to tell Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang that AI fears are ‘a hoax’.
In Al Jazeera’s account, Trump called the concerns ‘a hoax’ while talking to Huang over speakerphone, and the headline framed the moment as Trump calling and interrupting Nvidia’s CEO to make the point.
Axios similarly said Trump and Huang “unite against AI doomers” in a surprise on-stage call, with Trump telling Huang, “The robots will not be taking over,” and “The AI will not be taking over the rest of the world. The whole thing is a hoax.”
Axios added that Huang separately addressed the AI safety fears that erupted over the weekend, saying warnings from whistleblowers should be taken seriously and praising Anthropic whistleblower Jacob Coxon for having “great courage” to raise his concerns.
In the same Axios report, Huang rejected predictions that AI could end the world as “not grounded in science,” and said AI companies should pause or pace their work “if they feel that their company is out of control.”
Safety vs speed stakes
As the industry split widened, Al-Bayan described a widening split within the tech industry over whether it was time to hit the brakes or whether slowing the pace risked losing the race, placing Zuckerberg and Huang on the side skeptical of a coordinated industry-wide slowdown. Al-Bayan said Zuckerberg argued that competition and legal accountability push firms to invest in safety without requiring a collective agreement that would force all labs to slow their development, and it described Huang’s position as speed and safety not being mutually exclusive. Boursorama reported that King Charles of England would host leaders from Nvidia, Google DeepMind, OpenAI, and Anthropic, alongside the UKAI minister, to discuss “the need for a common set of principles” to govern AI as fears about threats intensify.
Boursorama also said the meeting would come after Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei said on Saturday that companies should slow the pace of AI model advances, and it noted that Trump rejected any call for a slowdown. In the same Boursorama account, Buckingham Palace said the meeting would focus on how AI could be used for the benefit of society and contribute to “the flourishing of both people and the planet.”