Trump Calls AI Risks 'Hoax' as CEOs Split on Regulation — SkimNews
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- Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei proposed a three-step plan over the weekend for embedding third-party evaluators in labs, coordinating across the domestic industry, and forging international agreements.
- OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Google DeepMind co-founder Demis Hassabis, and Elon Musk publicly appeared to agree with aspects of Amodei's plan, while Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg quickly came out against limiting companies' autonomy.
- Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang scuttled proposals for an industry-funded independent AI regulator akin to FINRA, per the Wall Street Journal, though OpenAI hasn't given up on the idea.
- OpenAI's Chris Lehane told The Verge that Congress should turn bipartisan momentum into mandatory national safety standards for frontier AI, calling the policy window "open."
- Trump called AI risks a "hoax" last week, posting that AI only needs "a STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT" and denouncing a "SICK conspiracy" against AI and data centers.
- Executive Order 13960, signed by Trump in his first term and never repealed, created principles for federal AI use protecting privacy, civil rights, and civil liberties — a stance former DHS emerging tech director Nick Reese called "a real change in the president's position."
- Nick Reese said the administration's AI positions have been "wobbly and inconsistent" and that "the core problem is that we have AI that is not physical or embodied in a robot that is hurting humans now."
Why it matters: With Zuckerberg, Musk, and Huang able to block the FINRA-style industry regulator, the path to AI safety rules now runs through a Congress whose momentum Trump actively opposes — and the White House's only enforcement lever is pre-release testing, not the mandatory standards OpenAI is lobbying for. Trump's "hoax" rhetoric, set against his own unrepealed EO 13960, leaves the federal stance legally inconsistent.
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