Donald Trump lashes out at 'conspiracy theorists' raising alarm over rapid AI development in 'sick hoax'

Alarms were first raised by Anthropic chief executive Dario Amodei, who penned an essay calling for a slowdown in development of AI and to implement guardrails against the technology.

Those calls were backed by Sam Altman, chief executive of OpenAI, developer of ChatGPT, by tech tycoon Elon Musk, who owns SpaceXAI, the developer of Grok, and by Sir Demis Hassabis, the chair of Google DeepMind.

But the President said on his social media platform Truth Social the only "guardrails" needed against AI was a "STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT and the USA has that, in spades!"

Mr Trump also said the US already has "tremendous CRIMINAL and REGULATORY power" over the technology, adding that there was a "SICK conspiracy going on against AI and Data Centers, and the only one that is happy about it is China".

He added: "We are leading China, and all others, and will continue to do so. Conspiracy Theorists, Treasonists, Traitors, and Leakers, BEWARE!"

This was the first of six posts against artificial intelligence made in a roughly seven hour period on Truth Social, between 2.58pm and 9.53pm on Monday.

Congress has held committee hearings on the rapidly developing technology and had dozens of bills proposed, but no regulation has been introduced.

The White House previously placed export controls on Anthropic's advanced models Mythos 5 and Fable 5, but these were dropped after two weeks.

Democrats in the House of Representatives will discuss their next steps on AI on Tuesday before a vote on a bill which would limit data centre costs for local communities.

The President would then go on to describe the Russian invasion of Ukraine and his first and second impeachment trial as "hoaxes" and "scams".

"Google has recently stated that they want to build a massive plant in Finland, all because they are finding permitting too difficult in the United States. I am not happy about this, and want them to change their thinking," he added.

"AI, and Data Centers, will be the Greatest Economic Development Engine in History ­­— Bigger than Oil, Gold, Diamonds, or even the Internet. It will not be stopped by brilliantly run Destructive Forces during the Term of President DONALD J. TRUMP!"

In a separate post, he said: "The people that say AI is going to destroy the World, and that Data Centers are bad for your neighborhood, are the same people that said, just a short time ago, that the World would be extinguished by 'Climate Change.' That HOAX never worked out for them, and now they're on to the next one."

AI data centre construction has become a key issue on the midterm campaign trail and is likely to be a major focus during the 2028 Presidential elections, with possible Democratic candidates Ro Khanna, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Illinois Governor JB Pritzker all putting an emphasis on their development.

Both sides of the aisle are now strategising how to approach the hot-button issue - Hakeem Jeffries, the House Minority leader, backed Mr Obama's calls for "decisive action" on AI, while Republican Senator Josh Hawley has launched an investigation into reports of OpenAI agents going rogue and hacking AI platform Hugging Face.

Meanwhile, Tom Duff Gordon, OpenAI's company policy chief in Emea, told Politico the UK should "act now to set up a stronger set of safety rules", urging Andy Burnham's Government to "take advantage of this political window which is clearly opening up".

The UK has established the AI Safety Institute but has largely shied from introducing a mandatory testing for AI companies, despite committing to its in its 2024 general election manifesto.

King Charles will invite technology leaders to Scotland for talks on ensuring AI is developed responsibly and with humanity's best interests.

Georgia Gould, School Standards Minister, told GB News on Monday the Government had "already taken action to to regulate our AI" by banning deepfakes and by "critically banning harmful tools that can produce child abuse imagery".

"We have some of the best people in the world through the AI Security Institute, really getting ahead of AI and making sure that we're understanding risks into the future," she added.