Trump dismisses push for AI guardrails despite warnings from tech leaders

Washington — President Trump on Monday threw ice-cold water on the momentum for stronger guardrails around advanced artificial intelligence development, claiming the industry is already regulated and all that's needed is a "SMART (HIGH IQ) PRESIDENT." 

The president's stance posted to Truth Social comes as Anthropic co-founder and CEO Dario Amodei, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk call for a serious slowdown on AI development. Democrats and a growing number of Republicans have also expressed skepticism about the development of increasingly capable large language models. 

"The only control or 'guardrails' that AI needs is a STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT, and the U.S.A. has that, in spades!" Mr. Trump wrote, before going after Amodei, whose company is the developer of Claude. "The Trump Administration has stopped AI 'people' from doing bad, or potentially bad, 'things,' like Dario (Anthropic!), who is now pretending to be a 'perfect little angel' — and we will continue to do so!"

"We already have tremendous CRIMINAL and REGULATORY power over these companies!" Mr. Trump continued. "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!"

It's not clear what criminal and regulatory rules the president was referring to. In December, the president signed an executive order aimed at easing AI regulations. 

Vice President JD Vance said the companies asking to be regulated feels a bit like a "Trojan horse." 

"So there are obviously risks to AI," he told reporters Monday. "There are some benefits to AI. I have to say, just personally, I feel a little bit weird about the fact that you have so many frontier AI tech companies, kind of coming to the government and begging the government to regulate them, it feels a little bit to me like a bit of a Trojan horse. So I think we just have to be careful about this."

Amodei told CBS News in an interview last week, "I won't lie to you – there are real dangers" about the development of artificial intelligence. 

"And I think for too long the industry lied to people about the fact that this technology had risks," he said.

On Tuesday, unlikely bedfellows Steve Bannon and Sen. Bernie Sanders, as well as Republican and Democratic lawmakers, are attending the Pro-Human Assembly in Washington, D.C., about the need to make sure AI serves humans, not the other way around. 

But immediate or significant movement in Congress seems unlikely in a body that's been able to accomplish little significant legislation in 2026.