Donald Trump Says There Already Are Enough Guardrails Around AI

Amid the increasing alarm over AI‘s supercharged capabilities, Donald Trump rejected calls for new regulation, saying that there already are guardrails in place.

In a Truth Social post on Monday, Trump wrote, “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! The Trump Administration has stopped AI ‘people’ from doing bad, or potentially bad, ‘things,’ like Dario (Anthropic!), who is now pretending to be a ‘perfect little angel’ – and we will continue to do so! We already have tremendous CRIMINAL and REGULATORY power over these companies! There is a SICK conspiracy going on against AI and Data Centers, and the only one that is happy about it is China. WHOEVER WINS AI, WINS! We are leading China, and all others, and will continue to do so. Conspiracy Theorists, Treasonists, Traitors, and Leakers, BEWARE!”

On Saturday, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei posted an essay in which he called for slowing down AI development, warning that a “swarm” of AI agents could be capable of taking over the internet in 6-12 months.

He wrote, “Given the accelerating rate of AI capability development, it’s my worry that in 6–12 months such a swarm could be capable of taking over the entire internet with a persistent botnet (potentially causing hundreds of billions of dollars in damage), and that the scale of damage would continue to increase from there if AI becomes more powerful without the necessary guardrails.”

Amodei called on AI companies to commit to third-party evaluators “to verify adherence to safety practices and commitments, report incidents, and help assess the alignment of not just completed AI models but training pipelines and processes.”

Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, and Elon Musk, founder of SpaceXAI, signalled agreement with Amodei.

Amodei also called on governments to coordinate on safety standards.

Trump, though, has warned of a slowdown in AI development ceding the technological arms race to China. He also has chided communities that have tried to block the construction of data centers, even though the backlash against the sprawling developments has come from both parties.