Trump interrupts Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang live on stage with surprise phone call about AI safety
US President Donald Trump has made his position on the recent AI backlash clear, and he even took the opportunity to gatecrash Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang on stage in a continued bid to oppose AI safety concerns.
Despite suggestions that he has never even used AI, Donald Trump has remained firm in his belief that the rapidly evolving tech is both the present and future of the United States, and opposes any attempts from leading development labs to slow down progress.
It appears as if we're at a major crossroads, however, with companies like Anthropic, OpenAI, and Elon Musk's xAI all in agreement that action needs to be taken to mitigate potentially civilization-destroying risks — but President Trump doesn't see it that way.
He shut down claims that the US government should take responsibility for AI risks, demanding companies to proceed with increased speed — and a recent surprise appearance saw the president go on an extended rant about the 'hoax' that AI companies are spreading.
President Trump interrupts Nvidia CEO to back AI
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang was shocked when his phone was rushed on stage during a live show for the All-In Podcast, and he knew that only one person could be calling.
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Answering the call, the audience and fellow speakers realized that President Donald Trump was on the other end, and he seemingly had a lot to say about the current crisis facing the AI industry.
"So the thing about AI is that it's almost a conspiracy, and the happiest group is China, and China is very happy," Trump began, suggesting that the plans to slow down development are only going to benefit China in the wider 'AI race'.
"I could even say in the country, a lot of states are happy that weren't going to get anything because they're being inundated by people that want to be there. But now all of a sudden you see they're building in Finland.
"And I'm telling you it's all a hoax," Trump boldly proclaimed. "The data centers are great, and they make people wealthy, and they make states wealthy, and it's the oil of the next 20-25 years.
"It's bigger than the internet and the AI, much more so, and they're just playing right into the hands of a lot of people that don't want to see it happen. That could be political people. It could also be China. And we're not going to let that happen, it's a hoax."
Trump certainly seems firm in the belief that the concerns outlined by Anthropic are not only overblown but untrue, suggesting that AI can only bring benefits to America with data centers making people 'wealthy'.
This is something that Huang also echoed in agreement with the president, adding: "We're going to make sure that everybody wins in the AI race in Ameica. Every industry, every company, every state, every people."
Why do AI labs want to slow development?
While there's no doubt that Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei also wants AI to succeed, he – like many others – is worried about the risks that are associated with the speed that it is currently being developed at, especially when we are about to reach the point where AI drives its own development.
It's something that he has specifically called out before, but a recent concerning essay was seemingly enough to unite many of the industry's most prominent figures in agreement, much to the disapointment of President Trump.
The essay specifically highlights the dangers that could arise if AI is 'left unchecked', with Amodei indicating that "it could outrun our ability to understand and control these systems, and so [recursive self improvement] must be pursued very carefully, if at all."
He also points towards the recent Hugging Face incident (OAI-HF), where OpenAI's frontier models autonomously hacked another independent company as a way of achieving its goals, showing the potential for AI to operate like this on a far larger scale in the near future with the risk of agents 'swarming' the internet.