President Donald Trump rejected the idea of placing guardrails on artificial intelligence, saying in a Truth Social post Monday that the only control needed is “a STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT, and the U.S.A.has that, in spades!”In the same post, he appeared to hint at the government pursuing criminal or regulatory penalties against AI companies after industry insiders warned of potentially catastrophic dangers posed by the rapidly evolving technology.
“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!” he said, referring to Dario Amodei, the CEO of Anthropic, maker of the Claude AI chatbot.Amodei said in a Saturday essay that AI companies should “slow the pace” of AI development.“We already have tremendous CRIMINAL and REGULATORY power over these companies!” Trump continued.“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!”Even as the American public and members of his own party grow increasingly skeptical of AI, the president has framed the technology’s continued growth as an economic and geopolitical imperative.
Communities that reject AI data centers will wind up “backwards and poor,” he warned recently.And in Ireland last weekend, he was even blunter: “Whoever wins AI wins.” Yet a recent NBC News Decision Desk poll found that 70% of adults said they were more worried about AI than excited about it.
A similar percentage — 69% of adults — said they somewhat or strongly oppose the construction of an AI data center in their local area.That includes 57% of Republican voters.
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