President Donald Trump called AI safety concerns a "hoax" during an unscripted speakerphone appearance at the All-In Summit in Los Angeles on Monday, telling Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang live on stage that warnings about the technology are playing "right in the hands" of America's rivals — and Huang agreed.
The call came as Huang was mid-conversation with the venture capitalists who host the All-In podcast, including Chamath Palihapitiya, Jason Calacanis and White House advisers David Friedberg and David Sacks. Rather than send the president to voicemail, Huang put the call on speaker so the entire audience could hear, a moment attendees captured on video that spread rapidly across social media. For more context on this story, see our ongoing artificial intelligence updates.
"The great thing about life is Jensen can develop the most complex computer chip in the world ... but he can't figure out how to put you on speaker," Trump joked, as Huang asked stagehands for an extra microphone to project the call to the crowd.
'It's a Hoax': Trump Aligns With Nvidia Against the Slowdown Camp
The onstage discussion had centered on the weekend's extraordinary intervention by Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, who called for the pace of AI capability development to slow and be more closely monitored. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Elon Musk have publicly said they agree with Amodei — a position Huang's views have sharply diverged from.
On the phone, Trump framed the safety movement as a cover for strategic competitors. "They're just playing right in the hands of a lot of people that don't want to see it happen," he said. "That could be political people. It could also be China. And we're not going to let that happen. It's a hoax."
"You're right. We're not going to let that happen, sir," Huang replied as the crowd broke into applause.
The president's comments did not stop at the summit stage. In a series of social media posts, Trump compared warnings about AI to what he called the "Global Warming Scam" being "perpetrated by the Radical Left Dumocrats," styled himself "the Hoax Buster," and likened the safety debate to the "RUSSIA, RUSSIA, RUSSIA HOAX." The only "guardrails" AI needs, he wrote, is a "strong and smart" president.
"There is a SICK conspiracy going on against AI and Data Centers, and the only one that is happy about it is China," Trump wrote in another post. "WHOEVER WINS AI, WINS!"
Public Opinion Tells a Different Story
The dismissive rhetoric collides with polling data suggesting the public remains deeply uneasy about AI infrastructure. Recent Gallup polling, cited by TechCrunch, shows seven in 10 Americans oppose the construction of data centers in their area, with more than 50% of respondents citing the effect on environmental resources. About 20% pointed to cost-of-living increases and quality-of-life concerns.
Trump acknowledged some of that tension in his call with Huang, saying the country has "to be a little bit careful" and act "prudently, but that doesn't mean we're going to stop an industry." He added: "So I'm with you all the way. I didn't even know how you felt about it. I just hoped you felt the same way as me. We're going to lead."
A White House Siding With the Accelerationists
The exchange crystallizes a split that has opened up across the AI industry over the past week. Since Amodei published his pacing essay, executives and researchers inside the frontier labs have traded accusations over whether the safety alarms are genuine or self-serving. Trump and allies such as Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan have argued that opposition to data center construction amounts to a coordinated campaign to stifle American economic growth.
Chinese state media pushed back on the president's framing. Chinese experts have warned that "Washington's growing anxiety over China's rapid AI development appears to be increasingly distorting its policy priorities," Xin Qiang, a professor of American Studies at Fudan University, told the Global Times, according to the BBC.
The debate is also rippling through corporate strategy. Microsoft's AI division this week published guidance on what it calls "humanist AI," discussing limits on the models it develops, and CEO Mustafa Suleyman told CNBC the document had been in the works for months but was released now because of the current controversy.
Meanwhile, US markets spent Monday digesting the fallout from the safety debate, after a global selloff in AI-exposed stocks accelerated on slowdown fears.
The political fight is set to continue in Washington, where former Trump chief strategist Steve Bannon and progressive Senator Bernie Sanders are due to appear at the same "Pro-Human Assembly" event on Tuesday, calling for a re-evaluation of AI policy from opposite ends of the political spectrum. Sanders told BBC's Newsnight last week that "we have got to do something immediately to stop the uncontrolled growth of AI."
With the White House openly mocking safety concerns and the industry's biggest chipmaker amplifying the message, the standoff between acceleration and caution now runs straight through the heart of US technology policy — and both sides show no sign of backing down.
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