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President Donald Trump rejected concerns about catastrophic dangers from artificial intelligence as he spoke to reporters on the sidelines of the Irish Open in Ireland on September 13, 2026. His comments followed a wave of dire warnings from researchers at leading laboratories and a coordinated call from several chief executives to moderate the pace of progress. Trump instead framed the issue as a geopolitical competition that the United States was currently winning.
Trump told reporters he had no worries about AI leading to human extinction. “No, I don’t have any,” he said according to coverage from Politico that aligned with his statements that day. “I have concerns that if we don’t win AI, we’re going to be put in a very bad position. We are leading China right now by a pretty good period,” Trump added, according to Bloomberg reports on the exchange.
The president’s remarks came on the same day that former Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon, who previously worked at OpenAI, told the BBC that staff developing the systems were genuinely frightened for the future of humanity. Coxon warned there is a strong chance that we could all die in the immediate future if the current pace of development continued, the BBC reported. He quit the company days earlier over those concerns.
Anthropic chief executive Dario Amodei released an essay on Saturday calling for the industry to slow the rate at which it improves AI model capabilities in order to reduce the risk that something goes seriously wrong, according to Bloomberg. OpenAI chief Sam Altman and Elon Musk, who runs xAI, swiftly endorsed the message. Amodei outlined a plan involving independent evaluators with access to company processes, coordination among firms on safety standards and international cooperation.
Other researchers at frontier AI companies have estimated significant probabilities of severe outcomes. Anthropic alignment science lead Evan Hubinger placed the risk of AI causing human extinction at greater than 10 percent within a decade, according to compilations by Ground News from recent statements. Marcus Williams on OpenAI’s safety oversight team estimated a 70 percent risk within three years without regulation or a slowdown, the same reports noted. Such assessments have intensified debate inside and outside the laboratories.
The latest warnings build on earlier collective action in the sector. More than 1,000 employees from major AI and technology companies signed an open letter in July urging the US government to develop tools that could deliberately pace the frontier of automated AI development when safety measures lag, CNN Business reported. That appeal followed a 2023 open letter signed by hundreds of experts that called for treating the risk of extinction from AI as a global priority on the scale of pandemics and nuclear war.
The Trump administration has pursued policies aimed at removing barriers to AI innovation to sustain American leadership. A White House fact sheet issued in January 2025 detailed an executive order revoking prior policies viewed as hampering private sector development and directing an AI action plan focused on global dominance. The New York Times has reported that the approach contrasts with cautions from some economists and technologists about potential job losses, financial bubbles or unchecked risks, with the administration instead highlighting economic gains and competition with China.
