Barack Obama weighs in on AI dangers after Trump said he should be the only ‘guardrail’
Por Owen Scott — – World RSS Feed
Barack Obama weighs in on AI dangers after Trump said he should be the only ‘guardrail’
‘I’m not an AI accelerationist who believes it will lead to some techno-utopia,’ former president writes
Owen Scott Tuesday 15 September 2026 12:13 BST
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Barack Obama has weighed in on the dangers of artificial intelligence just a day after President Trump said that he could serve as a “guardrail.”
Trump hit out at calls for more regulation on A.I. from industry leaders on Monday, alleging that a “SICK conspiracy” was underway to undermine the technology’s progress.
In his own statement, Obama took a different approach to his successor and said that he was “encouraged” to see A.I. leaders calling for a slower pace for A.I. development – something Obama described as a “good and necessary first step.”
“I’m not an AI accelerationist who believes it will lead to some techno-utopia, and I’m not a doomer who thinks it will inevitably lead to humanity’s destruction,” the former president noted.
The 44th president warned that the potential impact of the technology is not “overhyped” – rather that it was “moving at lightning speed” and “faster than those who are engineering it can keep up with.”
open image in galleryUltimately, Obama suggested that the potential impact of artificial intelligence should be decided by people, as well as the companies involved in developing it.
“But whether this technology results in amazing breakthroughs in medicine, energy and education or unleashes huge economic disruptions, greater inequality, and potential catastrophe will depend on the choices that we make right now – choices that should be made not just by the companies involved, but by all of us,” he wrote.
Calls for limiting the pace of A.I. developments were sparked on Monday when Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei penned an essay in which he warned that the technology has been “advancing dramatically faster” since the summer.
Amodei put forward a three-step plan to involve third-party evaluators at A.I. firms, something Anthropic is committed to, and for governments to agree on safety standards.
open image in gallerySeveral of Anthropic’s rivals, including OpenAI’s Sam Altman and Grok’s Elon Musk, voiced their own support for Amodei’s message.
“Dario is right,” Musk wrote on his social media platform X.
“Committing to having independent evaluators with employee-like access is a great idea, and we will do the same,” Altman wrote on the same website.
On Truth Social, Trump tore into warnings surrounding A.I., attacking claims that the technology could be destructive and dismissing concerns over data centers.
open image in gallery“The people that say AI is going to destroy the World, and that Data Centers are bad for your neighborhood, are the same people that said, just a short time ago, that the World would be extinguished by ‘Climate Change,’” he wrote. “That HOAX never worked out for them, and now they’re on to the next one.”
Trump added, “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!”
Pressure to slow the pace of A.I. development has continued to increase, though, with former Vice President Kamala Harris advocating for greater restrictions on the speed of the technology’s progress.
open image in galleryHarris, who is widely considered to be a frontrunner for the Democratic nomination for president in 2028, went as far as to describe a slowdown as “critical.”
“A slowdown is critical in order to ensure AI serves the public interest,” she wrote. “Pacing AI development does not mean giving up on this technology’s potential to produce life-saving benefits in fields like medicine — some of which we are already seeing.”
Harris added, “Rather, it is about setting up sensible guardrails so that AI does not completely escape human control and endanger our safety and collective future.”
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artificial intelligenceAIBarack ObamaDonald Trump
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