Trump, Mike Johnson cite China as both downplay AI doom warnings
President Donald Trump on Sunday dismissed urgent warnings about artificial intelligence as House Speaker Mike Johnson dismissed calls for a rush to regulate the rapidly evolving technology.
One day after top industry leaders agreed they need to slow down, Johnson said it’s up to AI companies — not Congress — to stop the rapid speed of AI.
“The guys that are calling for this are the ones that are pushing the frontier. If they want to slow that down, that’s fine,” Johnson said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “But we also, at the same time, have to resist Congress jumping in and imposing some sort of emergency moratorium.”
Trump, speaking reporters at the Irish Open hosted at his golf resort in Doonbeg, echoed the speaker’s sentiments, saying it’s more important for the U.S. to beat China in the AI race than hurry to stave off potential catastrophe.
“Look, 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,” the president said, before addressing doom warnings. “I think you have a lot of negative forces that are bringing it up, that shouldn’t be bringing it up, and they’re bringing up things that won’t happen. But whoever wins with AI wins. You know, it’s an expression that I came up with, and it’s true,” he said.
Trump and Johnson’s separate remarks came a day after Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei called for a slowdown in the development of artificial intelligence in the wake of predictions that the technology poses serious and perhaps existential harm to humans. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman publicly agreed with him.
Johnson said that if the U.S. puts the brakes on AI development, “China will overlap us, and that’s the challenge: it’s national security balanced with the immediate security of making sure the models are safe.”
“We don’t need everybody to panic right now. We need to handle this new technology like we have others in the past, and make sure we’re doing everything we can responsibly to also not smother American innovation,” Johnson said. “We have to do both things simultaneously.”
Last week, Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon announced on social media that he was resigning from the company, warning that AI would soon be “superhuman systems,” possibly causing human extinction by 2030.
Johnson, who said he has met with AI leaders individually, has called for a summit-style meeting between lawmakers and tech leaders.