President Donald Trump said Saturday he will form an “AI Force,” hinting at a law enforcement role as public anxiety grows over the rapidly accelerating technology.
He also pledged to appoint an AI czar and compared recent calls for the AI industry to slow down development to politically driven “hoaxes.”
“We will not in any way hinder or stifle the Growth of this incredible Industry,” Trump posted on Truth Social. “Rather, we will cherish it, help it, and watch over it, as it grows!”
He noted a backlash against data centers, which have emerged as a top issue during the midterm election season, and claimed it has largely failed.
But Trump suggested that the administration will be on the lookout for bad behavior, saying the existing criminal and civil justice system can handle it.
“For this purpose, I am forming the AI Force, much like I did Space Force, which has been a tremendous SUCCESS, in my First Term,” he wrote.
Trump predicted AI could eventually represent as much as 25% of U.S. GDP and be more impactful than the internet.
“We are leading China, and the rest of the World, and I intend to keep it that way!” he added.
David Sacks had served as AI and crypto czar earlier in Trump’s second term, but the investor stepped down to become co-chair of the president’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.
Meanwhile, different parts of the administration have sought to rein in AI companies. The Commerce Department temporarily imposed export restrictions on Anthropic’s most advanced models.
Separately, the Defense Department sought to blacklist Anthropic by labeling it a supply-chain risk, though a judge later ruled it was illegal.
Trump’s announcement of an AI force comes a week after the industry’s top leaders agreed to throttle back the breakneck speed of development as warnings about its consequences grew more dire.
Last Saturday, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei announced that his company is committing to a new safety measure—giving independent evaluators permanent, employee-level access inside the company—as part of a broader plan he says is needed to slow the pace of AI development.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, SpaceXAI CEO Elon Musk, and Google DeepMind’s co-founder Demis Hassabis agreed.
Altman also told Fortune in an exclusive interview that his company and other leading AI labs may be close to announcing a pact to slow AI development and collectively address the rapidly increasing safety risks.
That came days after a researcher at Anthropic publicly announced his resignation, and accused both Anthropic and OpenAI (where he also previously worked) of acting irresponsibly in developing ever more capable AI systems.
“They are racing straight to self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives,” wrote Jacob Coxon in a post on X.
Anthropic’s head of alignment commented on the post, saying Coxon was correct in his assertion that many Anthropic and OpenAI researchers believe that increasingly powerful AI could potentially wipe out humanity.
Evan Hubinger, Anthropic’s “alignment science lead,” wrote in response to Coxon’s resignation post that “we really do earnestly believe AI could kill all humans!”
While Trump is pushing back against calls to slow AI’s pace, the rapid consensus among the industry’s leaders has also drawn claims of illegal behavior.
A lawsuit filed Friday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California alleged AI companies violated antitrust laws by agreeing to coordinate slowdown efforts, which the plaintiffs claimed would reduce the value of the AI subscriptions they paid for.
But the plaintiffs said they are not against the AI companies asking the federal government to develop AI regulation or grant an antitrust exemption.
“AI will quickly spin out of human control and could kill us all if we allow AI safety and protocol … to be controlled by private self-serving agreements between the world’s most powerful ‘for profit’ technology companies,” said Nick Rowley, the lead attorney for the plaintiffs.
