Trump Calls AI Safety Fears a 'Hoax' on Call to Nvidia CEO

President Trump rejected growing calls for AI safeguards, telling Nvidia's Jensen Huang on a speakerphone call that AI takeover fears are a 'hoax.'

President Donald Trump placed a call to Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang during the All-In Summit on Monday, and Huang put it on speakerphone. NBC News reports that Trump told Huang, 'The robots will not be taking over. The AI will not be taking over the rest of the world. The whole thing is a hoax,' and argued the US must beat China in AI development. Huang, who sits on Trump's council of science and technology advisers, told the president they were on the same page, saying, 'We're going to make sure that everybody wins in the AI race in America.'

The president's dismissal lands just as the industry's own leaders are begging for restraint. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei published a weekend essay titled 'We Must Pace the Frontier' arguing for slower development, and OpenAI's Sam Altman and Elon Musk agreed with calls for a slowdown, according to CNBC. The White House and its allies instead attacked the consensus: AI czar David Sacks wrote on X that tech giants should 'go ahead and pace the frontier' themselves, and Vice President JD Vance told reporters the regulatory push 'feels a little bit to me like a bit of a Trojan horse.'

The evidence is a week of escalating warnings followed by a frontal political rejection. Anthropic scientist Evan Hubinger said he believes the chance of AI causing human extinction 'within the next decade' exceeds 10%, per the BBC, and Anthropic co-founder Jack Clark told the BBC that a third-party-checkable 'kill switch' for dangerous AI may need to be mandatory. Trump responded on Truth Social with a barrage of posts calling AI fears a 'SICK conspiracy,' likening them to the 'Global Warming Scam,' and branding himself 'the Hoax Buster.' CBS News notes he also targeted Amodei personally, calling him 'Dario (Anthropic!), who is now pretending to be a perfect little angel.'

Trump's defense extended to the data center buildout, which he called 'great' and 'the oil of the next 20, 25 years,' while conceding people should act 'prudently,' according to NBC News. CNBC reports he blamed backlash on America's lead, writing that the only beneficiary of opposition 'is China.' Investors are already pricing the uncertainty: the BBC reports safety concerns triggered a selloff in shares of some tech firms on Monday, and Microsoft AI published a 'humanist AI' document outlining limits on the models it develops, with CEO Mustafa Suleyman saying the timing was tied to the current debate.

The fight frames a race-vs-safety tradeoff with global consequences. Investigative journalist Stephen Witt told PBS NewsHour that Amodei appears genuinely alarmed, that AI systems are 'escaping containment,' and that self-regulation cannot work without a referee — but he conceded Trump is 'not wrong' that a US pause without China would be damaging. He pointed to Trump's upcoming White House meeting with President Xi Jinping as an unprecedented chance to build an AI control framework akin to nuclear arms accords. Meanwhile, Chinese state media dismissed US anxiety as distorting its policy priorities, per the BBC.

Legislative action appears unlikely before the November 3 midterms: CNBC reports House members leave town Thursday and remain in their districts through October, and Speaker Mike Johnson told CNN's 'State of the Union' that a rushed emergency session would risk losing 'the race to China.' Johnson said Trump would call a meeting with AI leaders, and a source familiar with the matter told NBC News such a meeting was 'in the works' with no clear timing.