Trump calls AI doomsday fears a hoax as stocks slide

President Trump is rejecting calls to regulate artificial intelligence, dismissing warnings about the technology’s risks as a “hoax” even as tech industry leaders from within his own political orbit urge guardrails and stocks slide. The president’s position puts him at odds with a growing chorus of voices, including some prominent Republicans and industry executives, who are pressing for federal safety standards before November’s midterm elections.

Trump told reporters over the weekend that fears about AI going rogue were overblown.

“We can put guardrails, we can do this and that, but I think you have a lot of negative forces that are bringing it up that … shouldn’t be bringing it up, and they’re bringing up things that won’t happen,” Trump said.

In a TruthSocial post on Monday, the president defended his approach and singled out Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, who had warned of the dangers of unchecked AI in a blog post over the weekend.

“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!” Trump wrote. In a second post, he called the fear of AI destroying humanity a “hoax.”

Stocks fell Monday as calls for AI regulation mounted. The Nasdaq Composite Index dropped 0.9 percent and the S&P 500 fell 0.6 percent.

OpenAI’s Sam Altman wrote in an X post that the “world deserves confidence that American companies developing increasingly capable AI will act responsibly, especially as the trajectory of progress has steepened.”

“We welcome a federal framework that sets consistent safety requirements for frontier AI,” he wrote.

Elon Musk, one of Trump’s closest allies in the tech world, said, “Dario is right,” in a post on X this weekend.

Trump and his allies argue that less regulation is essential for Washington to win the AI race against Beijing.

“He is very much a trust the plan, trust the system, trust the markets, trust the innovators kind of guy,” said Chris Johnson, a Republican strategist and president of the American Energy Leadership Institute.

“There are two groups of people: there are Americans and panicans, and you don’t want to be a panican,” he said.

Brendan Steinhauser, a Texas-based Republican strategist and CEO of the Alliance to Secure AI, said the political winds are shifting toward more regulation.

“I do think that Republicans are going to talk more and more about AI safety and security. The polling data on this is really clear,” Steinhauser said.

According to a poll released in June from the nonpartisan AI Policy Institute, 78 percent of likely voters said they would choose “mandatory standards” on AI while only 8 percent said they chose “no regulation.”

Johnson said Monday that the White House will host a meeting with AI executives as soon as this week to “sort this out.”

Vice President Vance, a leading potential 2028 contender, urged caution on the issue while speaking to reporters on Monday.

“I feel a little bit weird about the fact that we have so many frontier AI tech companies’ kind of talking 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,” Vance said, noting that there are “risks” and “benefits” to the technology.

In Michigan, Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed has called for “public oversight” on AI, while Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has enacted regulations on AI data centers in his state.

The warnings come as Congress heads back into session for the final time before November’s midterm elections.

Doug Kelly, CEO of the tech industry group American Edge Group, which promotes data centers, said the U.S. must build more data centers and manufacture more advanced chips.

“We can’t give up our strongest advantage. We need to be able to build more data centers, manufacture more advanced chips, and develop the world’s best AI models here in America,” Kelly said.

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and former White House adviser Steve Bannon are set to speak at the same Pro-Human Assembly event on Tuesday to push for human-controlled AI.

Steinhauser predicted the issue will remain central.

“We are on an exponential growth curve in AI. This issue is not going to recede,” he said.