Trump rejects AI giants’ warnings of existential threat

The US president has argued that Washington cannot afford to slow down as China rapidly closes the technological gap US President Donald Trump has brushed aside mounting warnings from leading artificial intelligence executives that increasingly powerful AI could pose an existential threat to humanity, insisting that Washington’s priority should be defeating China in the technological race.Speaking to reporters in Ireland on Sunday, Trump acknowledged that some safeguards could be introduced but suggested the dangers were being exaggerated by unspecified “negative forces.”“We’re leading China in AI, we’re the most sophisticated country in the world, and frankly I want to keep it that way… Whoever wins AI wins,” he added, arguing that critics were raising scenarios that “won’t happen.”’Just slow down yourselves’Trump’s remarks came after Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei called for slowing frontier AI development, warning that increasingly autonomous systems could soon improve their own capabilities, evade existing safeguards and unleash large-scale cyberattacks beyond human control. In a rare show of unity, his rivals – OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and SpaceXAI CEO Elon Musk – both backed the pro...