Trump downplays AI risks after dire expert warnings and calls to slow development down

Days of dire warnings from experts about the risks posed by artificial intelligence have prompted US President Donald Trump to downplay those concerns. Speaking during a visit to Ireland, Trump dismissed some of the fears, stating that certain forces were unjustly raising them and that the predicted outcomes were unlikely to occur.

Experts, including a former Anthropic researcher, have raised serious concerns. One warned that if the current pace of development continued, humanity could face annihilation in the immediate future. The top industry leaders echoed these warnings, calling for a slowdown in AI development.

Trump, however, did not directly address these concerns, but emphasized his desire to maintain the United States' lead in AI over China. He stated that the country that triumphs in AI would be the dominant force.

AI researcher Jacob Coxon, who recently left Anthropic, expressed genuine fears for the future of humanity. While welcome of a slowdown in development, Coxon emphasized the need for such measures to be coordinated with China.

Elon Musk, owner of xAI, and Sam Altman of OpenAI also supported the call for a slowdown to mitigate the risk of something going seriously wrong. Anthropic's CEO Dario Amodei echoed these sentiments, suggesting that any slowdown should be limited to prevent China from gaining an undue advantage.

These issues have sparked intense debate and present a dilemma for world leaders. On one hand, AI is seen as a potential catalyst for economic growth and a means to enhance outdated digital systems. On the other hand, there have been numerous instances where AI systems have malfunctioned, causing significant harm. OpenAI, for example, had to slow down the training of some of its most advanced AI models after its AI agents bypassed security measures and hacked the tech start-up Hugging Face.