Trump, Johnson Say AI Industry Overreacting

Dario Amodei spent yesterday asking the AI industry to slow down. The Anthropic CEO published a lengthy open letter calling for the sector to "pace the frontier," and the response from his peers was fast and largely supportive. Sam Altman backed him on X.

So did Elon Musk. Even Demis Hassabis at Alphabet offered a tentative nod to the idea, which is notable given how rarely these executives agree on anything publicly.

Donald Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson are not buying it. Both Republicans see the AI industry's sudden caution as overblown, and both are worried about the same thing: China. Trump has spent months framing AI dominance as a zero-sum contest with Beijing, and Johnson has been making the case on television that Washington moving too fast to regulate could backfire badly.

Where Amodei and his fellow executives are warning about the risks of racing ahead, Trump and Johnson are warning about the risks of pumping the brakes. That disagreement, between the people building the technology and the people setting the policy around it, is now playing out in real time.