U.S. President Donald Trump took a shot at Anthropic's chief executive on Monday, saying the only guardrails artificial intelligence needs are a "strong and smart president."
Trump said his administration has already stopped and will continue to stop AI "people" from doing bad, or potentially bad, things, calling out Dario Amodei, who he said is now "pretending to be a perfect little angel."
Anthropic initially sought to work with the Trump administration even as Amodei criticized some of Trump’s AI policies, including the rescinding of Biden’s AI executive order and the Stargate initiative. But things came to a head early this year, when Amodei refused to give the Pentagon unrestricted use of Anthropic's Claude.
Then, on March 5, the Pentagon designated Anthropic a "supply-chain risk" to the U.S. military. The CEO later met with administration officials at the White House to discuss AI safety and cooperation
"We already have tremendous CRIMINAL and REGULATORY power over these companies," Trump said Monday in his post to Truth Social. "There is a SICK conspiracy going on against AI and Data Centers, and the only one that is happy about it is China. WHOEVER WINS AI, WINS! We are leading China, and all others, and will continue to do so. Conspiracy Theorists, Treasonists, Traitors, and Leakers, BEWARE!"
Last month, Trump mocked people pushing against data centers, warning that communities could "end up being backwards and poor."
Separately, Axios reported that ex-Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon, Sen. Bernie Sanders, and former Trump advisor Steve Bannon will join forces at an event on Tuesday to push for human-controlled AI. Coxon rocketed to overnight popularity after saying AI could kill humanity by 2030. As a result, some lawmakers urged Speaker Mike Johnson to bring the House back from its September recess to make progress on AI safeguards.
Trump recently dismissed AI extinction fears, instead saying the focus should be on staying ahead of China.
"I have concerns that if we don't win AI, we're going to be put in a very bad position," the president told reporters last week. "We are leading China right now by a pretty good period. I would say a year, which is, you know, considered a lot."