Over the weekend, Anthropic chief executive Dario Amodei urged the industry to “pace the frontier,” arguing for a deliberate slowdown in cutting-edge AI development and greater coordination among governments. That intervention landed amid a widening safety debate, including former Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon’s warning that people building advanced systems believed they could become lethal within the decade.¹

By Monday, President Donald Trump had made his position unmistakable. In Truth Social posts, he denounced calls to slow AI and rejected additional regulation, tying the argument to opposition against the rapid construction of data centers.²

Then came the political theater. During Huang’s onstage appearance at the All-In Summit in Los Angeles, Trump called the Nvidia chief executive and was put on speakerphone before a cheering crowd. “It’s a hoax,” Trump said of the alarm around AI. “The robots are not going to be taking over the world.”³ David Sacks amplified video of the moment on X, presenting Trump’s intervention as a rebuke to “AI Doomerism.”David Sacks (DavidSacks)⁴

Trump’s message went beyond dismissing extinction fears. He described data centers as an economic windfall, calling them the “oil of the next 20, 25 years,” and suggested resistance could play into the hands of U.S. rivals. Huang replied, “You’re right,” and said they would not let that happen.²

Huang’s own position was more carefully framed, if directionally aligned. He called AI safety “paramount” and said the United States could lead “and do it safely.” But he also dismissed sweeping extinction forecasts as scientifically ungrounded, drawing a line between exposing real problems inside a company and predicting civilization’s end.¹

The call crystallized the split: Trump and Huang argue America should build fast without being paralyzed by speculative catastrophe; Amodei and other safety-minded voices insist that speed without restraint is precisely the risk.