Trump and Johnson wave off Amodei's call to slow AI down

President Donald Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson dismissed Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei's call to slow AI development this week, saying a pullback would hand China the AI lead.

Trump said the U.S. is already ahead and waved off the safety concerns driving Amodei's proposal. "We're leading China in AI. We're the most sophisticated country in the world," he said, adding that "whoever wins with AI wins," according to MS NOW. He described warnings about AI risk as coming from "negative forces" raising problems that will not actually happen, MS NOW reported.

Johnson rejected the idea that Congress should intervene. "We also, at the same time, have to resist Congress jumping in" on AI regulation, he said, according to MS NOW. He did not dismiss the competitive stakes outright, saying, "China will overlap us, and that's the challenge: it's national security balanced with the immediate security of making sure the models are safe."

The response cut differently among Democrats. Former President Barack Obama urged the party to make AI "one of their central agendas" and put together "a very clear plan" on its economic and safety risks, he said in an interview with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries at a party fundraiser, according to TechCrunch. "This is something that is moving very fast in private hands, and if we don't get on top of it, I think can be dangerous," Obama said, adding, "If we do get on top of it, I do think it's beneficial." Obama has spoken with both Amodei and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and said Democrats should build a public framework once they regain control of the House, TechCrunch reported.

Amodei's proposal, which included giving outside evaluators access inside AI labs and coordinating safety standards across companies, now depends on voluntary adoption rather than any near-term federal rule, since the party controlling the White House and the House says no action is coming. Builders working with frontier labs should treat pacing and evaluator-access commitments as promises a lab chooses to keep, not requirements it has to.