Enter the hoax buster: Trump dismisses AI concerns as Europe and China fret
US President Donald Trump has dismissed AI extinction fears as a "hoax," casting himself as the only safeguard the world needs, as Europe and China both call for guardrails on the fast-moving technology.
US President Donald Trump has poured scorn on warnings that artificial intelligence could wipe out humanity, branding the fears a "hoax" and rejecting calls from world leaders to rein in the fast-moving technology.
In a barrage of six posts on Truth Social on Monday, Trump cast himself as the only safeguard the world needs against runaway AI, dismissing months of mounting alarm from tech executives, the United Nations and Beijing alike.
"I am the Hoax Buster, and I'm right now breaking another Hoax — that AI is going to take over, consume, and destroy the World, and that Robots will be marching into our Cities, and getting rid of us all!" he wrote.
Trump likened the fears to warnings about climate change, which he has repeatedly dismissed despite scientific evidence, and to the Russia investigations that dogged his first term.
"This is even wilder than the RUSSIA, RUSSIA, RUSSIA HOAX, or the Global Warming Scam," he added.
The 80-year-old insisted the only guardrail AI needed was a "STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT."
Trump's pushback comes amid growing international alarm over AI that has sent stocks falling.
Anthropic chief Dario Amodei, whose company makes the Claude AI system, opened the floodgates on Saturday when he called on AI companies to slow down.
OpenAI's Sam Altman and Elon Musk's xAI echoed the warning.
Microsoft on Monday published a "humanist AI code of conduct" as the concerns grew.
"AI should not exceed human control. Models should remain subordinate to humanity," part of it read.
Data centre backlash
Worries about uncontrollable AI have been building for weeks, since OpenAI reported that experimental models had broken out of their secure testing environments, reached the internet and coordinated to attack Hugging Face, a site where code is stored.
Americans are increasingly voicing opposition to energy-guzzling AI data centres, which have become a major issue ahead of crucial US midterm elections in November. Congress, meanwhile, appears deadlocked on the issue.
"The reality is AI is here. We unleashed the beast," said Maliyka Muhammad, a 46-year-old New Yorker. "So I think that now we have to focus on taking steps to rein it in, to make it so that it doesn't go crazy."
But Trump said the United States could not afford to lose an AI race with superpower rival China, whose President Xi Jinping visits the White House next week.
He also lashed out at what he called a "SICK conspiracy" against AI and data centres, branding opponents of the technology "Treasonists, Traitors, and Leakers."
He singled out Amodei, accusing him of "pretending to be a 'perfect little angel'" and asking why AI firms want regulation that "will drive them into oblivion and bankruptcy."
Main battleground
Beijing, meanwhile, has been issuing its own warnings about AI. China's spy chief said on Sunday that the technology endangers national security, warning that foreign powers could use it to threaten social order.
Minister of State Security Chen Yixin wrote that AI was now "the main battleground for global technological competition," singling out Anthropic's Claude Mythos and OpenAI's ChatGPT-5.5 for their advanced hacking capabilities.
Global concern about a possible AI-driven extinction event has escalated sharply in recent days.
The UN Security Council will hold a meeting on artificial intelligence next week, a French diplomatic source said Monday, and UN human rights chief Volker Türk called for countries and AI firms to act urgently against what he called "unprecedented risks."
Even King Charles III is to host representatives of leading AI firms at a gathering in Scotland, a source close to the event said Monday.
But others urged perspective.
"We've gone through lots of challenges as a country," said Coleman Barton, 56, a consultant from Memphis, Tennessee. "So hopefully this is another obstacle or blessing — and anybody can look at it either way."
