President Donald Trump dismissed warnings from artificial intelligence researchers that the technology could become uncontrollable and threaten humanity, saying his only concern is maintaining the U.S. lead over China in AI development.
Reporters asked Trump on Thursday as he departed Dallas whether he worried about AI leading to human extinction. "No, I don't have any," the president said.
Trump clarified his actual priority: "I have concerns that if we don't win AI, we're going to be put in a very bad position." He estimated the U.S. currently leads China in AI by "a year," which he called "a lot."
Trump's comments came days after Jacob Coxon, a researcher who worked at both Anthropic and OpenAI over the past three years, resigned and posted warnings on social media. Coxon accused the two leading AI companies of recklessly developing "self-improving" models that "could run amok."
"They are racing straight to self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives," Coxon wrote on X. He predicted these systems "will soon be superhuman systems that can hack anything, revolutionize any field overnight, and acquire real power and resources."
Coxon also claimed that teams at both companies "earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade."
Evan Hubinger, a researcher at Anthropic, publicly agreed. "I personally think it is >10% within the next decade," Hubinger posted on X, referencing the risk of human extinction.
Sam Altman, OpenAI's chief executive, told employees this week that his company is considering slowing development of cutting-edge AI models. Altman expressed hope that other companies would do the same, according to people familiar with his remarks.
