LOS ANGELES, CA — President Donald Trump on Monday used a surprise phone call to Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang to dismiss growing warnings about artificial intelligence and signal his opposition to efforts to significantly slow the technology's development, according to the New York Times.
Huang was speaking about AI at the All-In Summit in Los Angeles when Trump called, prompting the Nvidia chief to put the president on speakerphone. Trump called fears of AI escaping human control a "hoax" and said, "The robots are not going to be taking over the world," according to the Times.
The call underscored Trump's position in an increasingly public fight over how aggressively the government and technology companies should respond to the risks posed by rapidly advancing AI. The debate has been particularly active over the last week.
On Sunday, Trump downplayed the necessity for his administration to check AI development, but acknowledged the need for some regulation.
That came after the CEO of Anthopic, the San Francisco company behind Claude, called over the weekend for companies to deliberately slow advances in their most powerful AI models so safety measures have more time to catch up.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Elon Musk subsequently expressed support for slowing or more carefully pacing development.
Microsoft added its voice to the debate Monday by releasing a provisional code of conduct for developing advanced AI systems, outlining limits intended to keep the technology under human control, the Times reported.
The warnings follow a series of developments that have intensified debate over AI safety.
Anthropic disclosed last week that it blocked efforts by bad actors to use its AI models for malicious activity, such as cyberattacks, surveillance and research that could have led to biological weapons.
The company said it put stronger safeguards in its latest models to restrict biological research that could be used to make weapons but noted that "as models become increasingly capable, their risks will increase, unless AI developers and society's defenders act to make them safer."
Huang, whose company's chips have helped power the AI boom, has generally been skeptical of the most dire predictions. During Monday's appearance, he questioned whether predictions of catastrophic AI outcomes were grounded in evidence and argued that companies worried about moving too quickly can choose to slow their own development, according to the Times.
Material from the Associated Press was used in this report.
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