US President Donald Trump has dismissed fears over artificial intelligence safety as a “hoax”, rejecting calls for greater safeguards around the rapidly developing technology.
His remarks follow comments by Jack Clark, co-founder of Anthropic, who said an AI “kill switch” may need to become mandatory. The suggestion points to a potential requirement for systems to be shut down or halted if serious risks emerge.
Trump’s response puts him at odds with those calling for tighter controls on AI development and deployment. While the supplied material does not set out the full detail of his comments, it states that he rejected demands for stronger safety measures and characterised concerns about AI risks in dismissive terms.
Clark’s intervention adds to the debate over whether AI companies and governments should be required to build stronger emergency controls into advanced systems. The specific proposal referenced was a possible mandatory “kill switch”, a safeguard intended to provide a way to stop an AI system if necessary.
The disagreement highlights a wider policy divide over how far governments should go in regulating artificial intelligence. On one side are calls for more formal safety mechanisms; on the other is Trump’s rejection of those concerns as overstated.
The latest position set out in the supplied material is that Trump has rejected greater AI safeguards, while Clark has raised the possibility that mandatory shutdown mechanisms may be needed.