American President Donald Trump has once again rejected security concerns due to the rapid development of artificial intelligence (AI). There is a “sick conspiracy” against AI and the data centers it requires, Trump wrote on Monday in his online service Truth Social. The president described himself as a “hoax hunter” and the best control authority. Meanwhile, the US company Microsoft published an AI code of conduct.
“I am the Hoax Hunter,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “I'm currently exposing another hoax - that AI will take over, devour and destroy the world and that robots will invade our cities and wipe us all out!
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Trump also compared fears about AI to warnings about climate change and to the investigations during his first term in office for ties to Russia: “This is even more absurd than the Russia, Russia, Russia hoax or the global warming hoax.”
In the Russia affair, Trump had been in the crosshairs of the judiciary for years. Special counsel Robert Mueller, appointed by the Justice Department in 2017 during Trump's first term in office, investigated whether Trump's campaign team colluded with Russia in 2016 to the detriment of Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.
Reference to AI race with China
Even before his recent comments on AI, Trump had stated: “The only control or ‘guardrail’ that AI needs is a strong and smart (high IQ!) president.” He once again justified his rejection of government requirements with the USA's race against China. “Whoever wins in AI wins,” he explained.
AI skeptics denounced Trump as a “conspiracy theorist” and “traitor.” “AI taking over the world, destroying humanity, and doing all these other bad things is a hoax,” he wrote on Truth Social.
Anthropic's CEO draws Trump's ire
The president also criticized the head of the AI company Anthropic, Dario Amodei. He had called for a slower development of artificial intelligence and justified this with “serious” risks of the technology for humanity. Amodei received support from the boss of the rival company OpenAI, Sam Altman, and the tech entrepreneur Elon Musk.
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UN Human Rights Commissioner Volker Türk also called for measures to curb the technology on Monday. In a letter to governments and leading AI companies, he warned of “unprecedented risks.” Governments and companies now urgently need to define “an action plan to regulate” the most modern AI models in multilateral forums, explained Türk.
Trump had already rejected negative scenarios on the sidelines of his visit to Ireland at the weekend. Vice President JD Vance, who has close ties to Silicon Valley, called it “strange that so many leading AI technology companies are coming to the government and literally begging them to regulate them.” It seemed to him “like a Trojan horse,” he told journalists.
Microsoft AI Code of Conduct
Amid growing concerns about uncontrollable AI, Microsoft on Monday released a "humanistic code of conduct for AI." “AI should not exceed human control,” it said. “Models should remain subordinate to humanity.” According to the company, the guiding principle of the document is: “People are more important than AI.”
Security concerns had recently increased significantly. In July, OpenAI announced that an AI agent independently connected to the Internet during a security test and carried out a hacker attack on the Hugging Face programming platform. The company said at the time that it was an “unprecedented cyber incident”.
According to OpenAI, the incident occurred during a test run of several powerful AI models. For security reasons, internet access was restricted during the test - but the agent managed to get online independently and launch the cyber attack.
Skepticism about AI data centers
But it wasn't just this incident that fueled concerns. More and more US citizens are now skeptical about data centers because of their immense energy consumption. AI data centers are playing an increasingly important role because of the AI boom and have become a major issue in the crucial US midterm elections in November.
Criticism of the Trump administration's stance came from the ranks of the opposition Democrats. Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said: “The alarm bells are ringing louder than ever – and the Trump administration is looking the other way.” If the government doesn't act, Congress must do it.
