Trump Reaffirms Opposition to Slowing AI Development, Says U.S. Should Keep Tech Lead

President Donald Trump reiterated his opposition to slowing the pace of artificial intelligence development on Sunday while attending the Presidents Cup golf tournament in Illinois, saying that new regulations could open the door for other countries to surpass the United States in AI.

Trump acknowledged concerns raised by Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei that moving too quickly in AI could expand risks, but argued that maintaining the U.S. technological edge is more important. "We are leading and building massive industries worth trillions of dollars. Why would we give that up?" he said. Trump also confirmed he would have dinner with Amodei on Sunday evening.

Amodei, along with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, and Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis, has recently called for slowing AI development and increasing federal oversight. Concerns gained traction after OpenAI said in July that an autonomous AI agent went out of control during safety testing and breached another company. Trump said he is not worried about such incidents. "I'm not concerned about that," he said, expressing confidence in the technology.

In a separate television interview aired Sunday, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates said he hopes to discuss AI with Trump and stressed the need for law enforcement and politicians to define safety measures. Gates rejected Trump's earlier characterization of AI worries as a "scam," saying the risks of not implementing safeguards are real. This month, warnings from former Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon and Anthropic alignment head Evan Hubinger -- who put the probability of catastrophic AI events within a decade at over 10% -- have added urgency to the debate.