Trump condemns AI slowdown as MPs and Lords call for new law to protect human rights  

US President Donald Trump has condemned a potential artificial intelligence (AI) development slowdown as “a SICK conspiracy” and said that “WHOEVER WINS AI, WINS!” 

Trump's comments come on the back of a turbulent weekend for AI companies, as Dario Amodei, head of AI company Anthropic, called for a slowdown in the speed of development for the technology.

The call led to a fall in the share price of Hewlett Packard by 10 per cent, Intel and Sandisk by 7 per cent and AI chip manufacturer Nvidia by 3 per cent when the US stock market opened on Monday morning.

Writing on his social media platform Truth Social, Trump said: “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! The Trump Administration has stopped AI ‘people’ from doing bad, or potentially bad, ‘things,’ like Dario (Anthropic!), who is now pretending to be a ‘perfect little angel’ - and we will continue to do so!” 

Amodei’s comments were mirrored by a cross-party group of MPs and Lords who have called for a new law to tackle potential threats to human rights brought on by artificial intelligence.  

In a report published by the Joint Committee on Human Rights (JCHR), the committee highlighted the three main risks posed by AI as the right to equality and non-discrimination, the right to an effective remedy and the right to privacy and data protection.  

Chair of the JCHR, Alex Sobel MP, said: “Nowhere in the world, including the UK, has a current legislative and regulatory approach to AI that is fit for purpose. New legislation is needed to establish a comprehensive set of protections that deal with the entire AI supply chain and its lifecycle. A single AI regulator should be established to set policy, monitor performance and with the teeth to ensure enforcement.” 

The JCHR recommended that the government pass a new AI bill that establishes a regulatory regime to classify any risks posed by the technology. The committee also said that some uses of AI, like the “inappropriate” use of profiling or biometric data, should be “prohibited outright” because they are “incompatible with human rights”.  

Writing in an online essay, Amodei said the industry must “slow the pace at which we improve the capabilities of AI models” due to what he describes as “recursive self-improvement”.

Recursive self-improvement is when an AI system substantially advances the development of the next generation of AI, which Amodei says, if left unchecked, could “outrun our ability to understand and control these systems”. 

Amodei’s comments were supported by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, who wrote, “I agree with Dario that we need to pace the frontier” on X, and by Elon Musk, founder of xAI, who said Amodie was “right” to call for regulation. 

Amodei also warned of a potential “swarm” of AI agents that could cause “hundreds of billions of dollars in damage” through cyberattacks. 

To combat these threats, Amodei proposed a three-point plan that included independent monitoring of AI models as they are developed through embedded evaluators, the coordination of AI companies in democratic countries and efforts by the “US and other democratic governments” to coordinate with authoritarian governments to regulate AI.  

In response, Trump said: “We already have tremendous CRIMINAL and REGULATORY power over these companies! There is a SICK conspiracy going on against AI and Data Centers, and the only one that is happy about it is China. WHOEVER WINS AI, WINS! We are leading China, and all others, and will continue to do so. Conspiracy Theorists, Treasonists, Traitors, and Leakers, BEWARE!”