Trump says calls for more control on AI are a ‘SICK conspiracy’

US president says current oversight is adequate and regulations could allow China to win AI competition.

US President Donald Trump said there is a conspiracy against AI, one that would make China 'happy' [File: AFP]

Calls for increased government oversight of artificial intelligence are unnecessary and part of a “conspiracy” aimed at allowing China to out-develop the United States in the technology, said US President Donald Trump.

“There is a SICK conspiracy going on against AI and data centers, and the only one that is happy about it is China,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post on Monday.

list 1 of 3 Trump dismisses calls for AI slowdown from leading tech CEOs

list 2 of 3 ‘Silent Cold War’: Why calls to slow AI have sparked new US–China frontier

list 3 of 3 China rejects AI ‘threat narratives’, urges global cooperation

Trump said his administration had already stopped AI companies from doing “bad, or potentially bad” things, referring to Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei “who is now pretending to be a ‘perfect little angel’ — and we will continue to do so” and warned those he called “conspiracy theorists, treasonists, traitors, and leakers”.

“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!” Trump wrote.

It is the second day in a row that the US president has dismissed calls for an AI slowdown as concerns grow among legislators , technology experts and AI company executives over the potential for it to rapidly surpass human control.

“I think you have a lot of negative forces that are bringing that up and they’re bringing up things that won’t happen,” Trump said on Sunday, similarly dismissing the concerns in the rapidly growing industry.

Dire warnings from AI executives

The concerns were prompted in part by Anthropic’s Amodei publishing a blog post on Saturday saying the AI industry needed to slow the pace of improving its capabilities to allow time for guardrails to be established. Amodei wrote that in six to 12 months, AI agents “could be capable of taking over ⁠⁠the entire internet, potentially causing hundreds of billions of dollars in damage”.

He outlined a three-step framework intended to pace development and create more time to manage its risks. The proposal was immediately endorsed by several other executives at major AI companies, including Elon Musk, who runs xAI, and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.

Last week, US lawmakers and industry experts were alarmed by a former Anthropic researcher, Jacob Coxon, who said he resigned over concerns the technology being developed at the company had the potential to surpass human control. “The people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade,” Coxon said in a widely shared post on X.

On Friday, Anthropic released a report saying it had intervened to stop its Claude model from being used for potentially harmful activities, including cyber-espionage, weapons design and mass surveillance.

Users of the model had asked it to do the work of software engineers and conduct a variety of tasks, including writing missile-guidance and flight-control software, requests made from users in northern Yemen, where Iran-backed Houthis are stepping up a missile campaign targeting Saudi Arabia.

Other users had attempted to use Claude, the company said, to create potential bio-weapons for military use.

The company said it had stopped many of those attempts through internal safeguards and had no evidence the group was able to field a working weapon, although they did appear to have conducted an unsuccessful test-fire.

The spectre of uncontrollable AI is already having an impact on the industry, prompting Altman to delay the IPO of OpenAI, which was targeting a valuation of up to $1 trillion for its stock market debut, one of three AI companies thought to be at the trillion dollar value mark.

AI-linked stocks plunged across the globe on Monday morning after days of warnings by AI corporate executives.

Wall Street’s elite tech index, the Nasdaq 100, slid 1.7 percent in early trading. Chip stocks, which have led the AI rush, fell the most.

“If this does lead to sort of a slowdown and a rethink of AI spending, that will have ramifications for the economy and some important sectors of the stock market, because essentially, we’ve been running ‌‌hot based on AI spending,” said Steve Sosnick, chief market analyst at Interactive Brokers.

The Philadelphia chip index dropped 6 percent, with Nvidia down 3.5 percent, Advanced Micro Devices was off 5.6 percent, Micron fell 6.7 percent, while Musk’s SpaceX was 2.5 percent down.

Semiconductor equipment makers Lam Research and Applied Materials tumbled 8 percent and 7 percent, while tech utilities Bloom Energy lost 8.9 percent and GE Vernova declined 7.6 percent.

Europe’s tech sector fell 2.3 percent, dragged down by ASML’s 6.7 percent decline, alongside steep losses in Infineon and Siemens Energy. In Asia, SoftBank plunged as much as 13.2 percent and chipmakers TSMC and SK Hynix also retreated.

美国总统表示，目前的监管力度足够，相关法规可能会让中国在人工智能竞争中获胜。

美国总统唐纳德·特朗普称存在针对人工智能的阴谋，而这一阴谋会让中国“高兴”。[图片来源：法新社]

美国总统唐纳德·特朗普表示，呼吁加强政府对人工智能的监管是没有必要的，而且是旨在让中国在该技术领域超越美国的“阴谋”的一部分。

“针对人工智能和数据中心的邪恶阴谋正在进行，而唯一对此感到高兴的只有中国，”特朗普周一在 Truth Social 上发帖写道。

列表 1/3：特朗普驳斥科技巨头CEO们要求放缓人工智能发展的呼吁

列表 2/3 “无声的冷战”：为何呼吁减缓人工智能发展引发了美中关系的新前沿

列表 3/3：中国驳斥人工智能“威胁论”，呼吁全球合作

特朗普表示，他的政府已经阻止了人工智能公司做“坏事，或潜在的坏事”，他指的是 Anthropologie 首席执行官达里奥·阿莫迪，“他现在假装成一个‘完美的小天使’——我们将继续这样做”，并警告那些他称之为“阴谋论者、叛国者、叛徒和泄密者”的人。

特朗普写道：“人工智能唯一需要的控制或‘护栏’就是一位强大而睿智（高智商！）的总统，而美国在这方面人才济济！”

这是美国总统连续第二天驳回要求放缓人工智能发展的呼吁，而立法者、技术专家和人工智能公司高管越来越担心人工智能可能会迅速超越人类的控制。

“我认为有很多负面势力在炒作这件事，他们炒作的事情根本不会发生，”特朗普周日说道，同样对这个快速增长的行业中的担忧不屑一顾。

人工智能高管发出严峻警告

引发这些担忧的部分原因是Anthropic公司的Amodei周六发表的一篇博文。Amodei在博文中表示，人工智能行业需要放慢提升自身能力的步伐，以便有时间建立相应的保障措施。Amodei写道，在6到12个月内，人工智能代理“可能有能力接管整个互联网，造成数千亿美元的损失”。

他概述了一个旨在加快开发步伐并争取更多时间来管理风险的三步框架。该提议立即得到了包括 xAI 创始人埃隆·马斯克和 OpenAI 首席执行官萨姆·奥特曼在内的几家主要人工智能公司高管的支持。

上周，美国立法者和行业专家对前人格研究公司研究员雅各布·考克森的言论感到震惊。考克森表示，他辞职是因为担心该公司正在开发的技术有可能超越人类的控制。他在一篇被广泛转发的X论坛帖子中写道：“开发人工智能的人真心相信，到十年末，它可能会毁灭我们所有人。”

周五，人为组织发布报告称，该公司已介入阻止其 Claude 型号被用于潜在的有害活动，包括网络间谍活动、武器设计和大规模监控。

该模型的用户要求它承担软件工程师的工作，并执行各种任务，包括编写导弹制导和飞行控制软件。这些要求来自也门北部的用户，伊朗支持的胡塞武装正在那里加紧对沙特阿拉伯发动导弹袭击。

该公司表示，其他用户曾试图利用 Claude 制造潜在的生物武器用于军事用途。

该公司表示，已通过内部安全措施阻止了许多此类尝试，并且没有证据表明该组织能够部署可用的武器，尽管他们似乎确实进行了一次不成功的试射。

不受控制的人工智能的幽灵已经对该行业产生了影响，促使奥特曼推迟了 OpenAI 的 IPO。OpenAI 的目标是在股票市场上市时估值达到 1 万亿美元，它是三家被认为估值达到万亿美元的人工智能公司之一。

周一上午，全球人工智能相关股票暴跌，此前数日，人工智能企业高管发出警告。

华尔街顶级科技股指数纳斯达克100指数早盘下跌1.7%。引领人工智能热潮的芯片股跌幅最大。

“如果这导致人工智能支出放缓并需要重新考虑，那将对经济和股市的一些重要领域产生影响，因为本质上，我们一直以来都是依靠人工智能支出才取得如此强劲的业绩，”盈透证券首席市场分析师史蒂夫·索斯尼克表示。

费城芯片指数下跌 6%，其中英伟达下跌 3.5%，AMD 下跌 5.6%，美光下跌 6.7%，马斯克的 SpaceX 下跌 2.5%。

半导体设备制造商 Lam Research 和 Applied Materials 的股价分别下跌了 8% 和 7%，而科技公用事业公司 Bloom Energy 的股价下跌了 8.9%，GE Vernova 的股价下跌了 7.6%。

欧洲科技板块下跌2.3%，ASML股价暴跌6.7%，英飞凌和西门子能源也出现大幅下滑，拖累了整体走势。亚洲方面，软银股价暴跌13.2%，芯片制造商台积电和SK海力士的股价也出现下跌。