Self-proclaimed ‘Hoax Buster,’ Trump scoffs at warnings about AI dangers

U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday dismissed fears that artificial intelligence could wipe out humanity, repeatedly calling them a hoax and rejecting global calls to put guardrails around the fast-moving technology.

“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 said on his Truth Social network.

Trump compared the fears of AI taking control to warnings about climate change, which he has previously dismissed in the face of scientific evidence, and to the investigations in his first term into links to Russia.

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“This is even wilder than the RUSSIA, RUSSIA, RUSSIA HOAX, or the Global Warming Scam,” he added.

The 80-year-old also cast himself as the best protector against AI, insisting the only guardrails necessary were a “STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT.”

Trump’s pushback — in a screed of six social media posts on Monday — comes amid growing international alarm about AI that sent stocks falling.

Anthropic chief Dario Amodei, whose company makes the popular Claude AI system, opened the floodgates on Saturday when he called for AI companies to slow down.

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,” read one part.

Worries about uncontrollable AI have been mounting for weeks, since OpenAI reported experimental models had broken out of their secure testing spaces, reached the internet and coordinated to attack Hugging Face, a site where code is stored.

Americans are also increasingly voicing opposition to energy-guzzling AI data centers, which have become a major issue in crucial U.S. midterm elections in November.

“The reality is AI is here. We unleashed the beast,” Maliyka Muhammad, a 46-year-old New Yorker, told AFP. “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.