Trump dismisses AI extinction fears, cites China race

President Donald Trump on Thursday dismissed warnings from artificial intelligence researchers about the technology potentially causing human extinction, stating his primary concern is the United States losing the AI race to China. Speaking to reporters as he departed Dallas, Trump said he has no concerns about AI leading to human extinction. "No, I don't have any," he stated. "I have concerns that if we don't win AI, we're going to be put in a very bad position." Trump's remarks came amid a week of heightened warnings from within the AI industry. Jacob Coxon, a former pretraining researcher at Anthropic, resigned this week and posted on X that Anthropic and OpenAI were "racing straight to self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives." Evan Hubinger, Anthropic's Alignment Science Lead, shared Coxon's post and stated there is a greater than 10% chance AI could cause human extinction within a decade. Marcus Williams, a member of OpenAI's safety oversight team, put the risk at 70% within three years without regulation or a slowdown. The warnings prompted reactions from lawmakers.