President Donald Trump rejected new AI guardrails on September 14, writing on Truth Social that the only control AI needs is a strong and smart president. He named Anthropic co-founder Dario Amodei directly and accused him of pretending to be a perfect angel days after Amodei published an essay urging the industry to pace the frontier.
Trump said his administration had already stopped AI companies from doing bad or potentially bad things, and argued that China is the only party pleased by a backlash against the technology and its data centers.
His science advisers were blunter. David Sacks, co-chair of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, wrote that labs scared of their own unreleased models should slow down themselves rather than ask for rules, according to Wired.
Beijing answered the same day. Foreign ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun told reporters that fear mongering, confrontation and vicious competition only hamper sound global AI governance, after Reuters asked about the weekend calls from Amodei, Sam Altman and Elon Musk. Questions at the same briefing covered China placing AI under its national cybersecurity laws.
Amodei’s essay won rare agreement from Altman and Musk but no appetite for legislation in Washington, which leaves the first step of his plan – outside evaluators embedded inside Anthropic with badges and laptops – as the part his own company can deliver alone.
