Washington’s biggest question this week: Why is President Donald Trump so furiously against an AI slowdown in the wake of apocalyptic warnings from some top industry executives?
The clue is in one word — “hoax” — that he’s using to ridicule fears that computerized agents could one day seek to destroy humanity.
When Trump reaches for the H-word, two things are usually happening: He’s facing a controversy threatening his political or personal priorities, and he’s lost control of the politics.
Trump has long dismissed climate change as a “hoax.” So it was a tell that he went on social media to specifically draw an analogy between a planet that is warming despite his denials and the calls for AI controls expressed by leaders in the industry.
By changing reality, Trump frees himself from an obligation to act. In energy policy, that means “drill, baby, drill.” His administration has slashed regulation, pleasing oil industry donors. His rants against wind farms suggest he hankers for a 20th-century economy running on carbon.
The Jeffrey Epstein saga is a “Democratic hoax,” according to Trump. Searing testimonies from the accused sex offender’s victims make this a ridiculous charge. But Trump wants to end the storm over his onetime friend that periodically trips up his administration.
The same is true of another supposed “hoax”: the investigations into the Capitol riot on January 6, 2021. The outrage was the culmination of another event Trump wants America to forget: his bid to overturn the 2020 election. The hoax routine worked — it got him back to the White House to wield expansive executive power.
The president seems to hope that by simply branding fears of runaway AI as a hoax, he can make them go away.
But why?
One of a president’s jobs is to counsel a fearful nation, to examine and explain threats, and to advise whether a national effort must be summoned. “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself,” Franklin Roosevelt said at the start of a presidency deep in the Great Depression.
Every commander in chief followed suit in the Cold War. And George W. Bush corralled the country after 9/11, almost exactly 25 years ago.
That’s not Trump’s way.
But even as a political matter, Trump might be advised to take the AI freakout seriously. Americans are worried — not necessarily about extinction, but that the new technology will take their jobs. And by rejecting voter concerns about data centers, the president is leaping onto the wrong side of yet another issue as the GOP braces for tough midterm elections.
But the president’s blasé attitude to AI may be traced to a host of political, economic and personality traits that have unleashed turmoil across his two presidencies and that will shape his legacy.
One reason may be economic.
Any signal that AI development may slow would almost certainly trigger a reaction on the markets. As his Iran war sticks Americans with high gas prices and record diesel costs, Trump can’t afford any Wall Street turbulence that would hurt 401k accounts and check GDP growth.
He’s also showing philosophical objections to a slowdown. His presidency has been about unleashing business to make money, not dialing it back.
Former White House AI czar David Sacks argued over the weekend that by expressing concerns about AI’s destructive potential, industry titans were trying to pressure politicians and the public into creating their own “preferred” regulatory system.
Trump is taking a similar approach. “When, in the History of Business, did anyone see the Leaders of an Industry call for Regulation that, if strongly implemented, will drive them into oblivion and bankruptcy?” the president wrote Monday.
Trump’s governing style isn’t a good fit for this deeply complex issue. He said this week that he’s an AI user, but whether that goes beyond posting wild memes depicting himself as various superheroes is unclear. And he gets his news from the traveling printer of his aide Natalie Harp.
At the same time, there’s a possibility that’s often overlooked in the riotous Washington of the second Trump era: What if the president is going against the tide because he’s right about a few things?
This would not be the first time that a new technology has triggered warnings of doom that don’t play out. And some skeptics doubt alarmist talk from AI chiefs is genuine, suspecting that they are obliquely talking up the potential of their technology ahead of initial public offerings in the coming months.
And Trump has a serious point that even if the US slows AI development, China probably won’t, which would give it a superpower advantage.
Plenty of Democrats feel the same way, including President Joe Biden’s former national security adviser Jake Sullivan, who wrote in Foreign Affairs earlier this year that Washington “must up its game” in integrating AI across the military, warning that the US would lose leverage if it failed.
But Trump’s vision of his own power and place in history also explain his behavior.
He posted on Monday that America would be fine because it had a “STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT.” This might placate some supporters — but even if it’s true, it’s hardly a viable position. AI will be a generational issue long after he’s left office, and Trump, as the incumbent president, has a responsibility to set an early course.
Trump critics might wonder whether his views are shaped by personal considerations, including his ownership of stocks exposed to AI, as disclosed in a recent financial filing. The White House insists his accounts are independently managed by third-party institutions. But ethical questions raised by administration officials regulating industries in which their personal wealth is deeply invested has been a constant shadow over the president’s second term.
Trump’s resistance to unpleasant truths is also at work.
He’s never presented his presidency as a vehicle for confronting far-off threats or to tackle complex problems. He’s used it to enact revenge against his enemies, to troll his political foes, to boost his own fame and to invade the psyches of billions of people across the globe.
Trump would never issue the kind of dialectical statement that his first predecessor, President Barack Obama, released on Tuesday. The 44th president said he’d been agonizing over AI for a decade and that it was time for top US leaders to convene a national conversation.
“Whether this technology results in amazing breakthroughs in medicine, energy and education or unleashes huge economic disruptions, greater inequality, and potential catastrophe will depend on the choices that we make right now – choices that should be made not just by the companies involved, but by all of us,” Obama wrote.
Some Americans might have hoped from similar from Trump. But he’s a rebel and a backlash president. His anti-establishment credentials depend on being an outsider, not a unifier.
And Obama’s path ultimately points to a US-led international coalition. Trump hates multinational altruism. “America First” is about doubling down on US power, not watering it down.
If Trump refuses to lead, will Congress step in?
There’s no time for serious action before the midterms. But if AI explodes as a top campaign theme, it’s likely to drive the legislative agenda of whoever controls the House and Senate next year. And if Republicans suffer a wipeout because of Trump’s refusal to listen to voters, they may have an incentive to break with the president.
But they will be on their own.
“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!” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Monday.
