Trump Dismisses AI Extinction Risk, Says U.S. Leads China by 1 Year
Updated
Updated · CNBC · Sep 11
Trump Dismisses AI Extinction Risk, Says U.S. Leads China by 1 Year
3 articles · Updated · CNBC · Sep 11
Summary
Trump said he has no concern that AI could cause human extinction, arguing instead that the bigger risk is the U.S. failing to “win AI” against China.
A 1-year U.S. lead over China framed his remarks, which came as frontier-lab insiders intensified warnings that rapid advances could outpace human control.
Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon quit this week, saying Anthropic and OpenAI were “gambling with our lives,” while OpenAI alignment researcher Jasmine Wang warned against racing toward recursive self-improvement.
Jakub Pachocki, OpenAI’s chief scientist, said he expects progress toward self-improving AI to continue and is concerned no one is prepared for the consequences.
Congress is also stirring: the proposed FRONTIER Act would regulate advanced model deployment, while a separate Sanders-Casar bill would pause advanced AI development until federal safety rules are in place.
Could the geopolitical race to dominate artificial intelligence inadvertently trigger the exact existential catastrophe that researchers are desperately warning about?
If top developers are already resigning over fears of human extinction, who is left to build the guardrails for tomorrow's autonomous systems?