Donald Trump has dismissed calls to increase controls on AI as a “sick conspiracy”, as stocks linked to the technology slumped after appeals from leading developers on the weekend for the industry to slow down.
The US president wrote on social media: “The only control or ‘guardrails’ that AI needs is a STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT, and the USA has that, in spades!”
It came after the chief executive of Anthropic, Dario Amodei, appealed for the AI industry to limit “reckless” development. The OpenAI CEO, Sam Altman, the Google DeepMind chief, Demis Hassabis, and SpaceX boss, Elon Musk, posted support for Amodei’s essay urging slower AI development.
However, Trump was vehement in his opposition to calls to put on the brakes, writing on his Truth Social platform: “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!”
He said his administration already had “tremendous criminal and regulatory power over these companies” and claimed it had “stopped AI ‘people’ from doing bad, or potentially bad, ‘things,’ like Dario”.
Amodei wrote in his essay that “building too fast is reckless”, warning that a swarm of AI agents could cause hundreds of billions of dollars of damage by “taking over the entire internet”.
Amodei’s claims have been disputed by some experts, but on Monday investors began to price in a slowdown that would make it harder for the industry to pay for hundreds of billions of dollar in investments in AI infrastructure.
The tech-heavy Nasdaq index dropped 0.8% on Monday, as investors sold off US chip and memory stocks. Semiconductor designer Nvidia – the world’s most valuable company – shed 3.3% on the open, while Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), Micron Technology and Sandisk slumped by 5.6%, 6% and 5% respectively.
Shares in SoftBank, a Japanese investor that is a big backer of OpenAI, slumped 13%, while the South Korean Kospi stock index, which relies heavily on chipmakers that supply AI companies, dropped by 3%.
Shares in the big global microchip supplier Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company dropped 1.2%.
In Europe, shares in the Dutch tech manufacturer ASML, Europe’s biggest company by value and an important supplier for the semiconductor industry, slumped by as much as 5.4% in morning trading.
There was, however, a rally in shares that have been threatened by the rise of AI, including the advertising group WPP, which rose by 3.1%, and the analytics business Relx, which rose 4.2%. The latter had suffered a sharp fall earlier this year after Anthropic launched a suite of new data and automation tools.
Fears continue to grow over the rapid pace and lack of regulation in AI development. On Monday, a cross-party group of MPs and peers identified a series of human rights risks posed by AI, arguing that no country in the world has laws sufficient to contain them.
Meanwhile, China’s top intelligence official has warned that the use of AI by adversaries could pose a risk to the country’s political and social security.
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Chen Yixin wrote in a government outlet on Sunday that advanced US models such as Anthropic’s Mythos and OpenAI’s GPT-5.5-Cyber could pose serious risks to Beijing’s critical information infrastructure, and called for a comprehensive strengthening of AI security.
Despite such concern about the risks around AI, Jim Reid, of Deutsche Bank, said intense competition in the sector meant it was unlikely AI companies would stop investing so heavily in their technology.
“The competitive race between companies and countries remains intense, and it’s difficult to imagine firms voluntarily stepping back while rivals continue to push ahead.” he said. “It is hard to see China standing still.
“If leading executives are openly discussing the risks of increasingly powerful systems, it could be them trying to get across how transformative they believe the technology may become and help advertise the power of their product.
“Rather than signalling less spending, it could simply be that a greater share of AI investment is directed towards safety, monitoring and governance alongside the continued build-out of compute infrastructure.”
Amodei’s warning came before reports emerged that Anthropic is on track to be profitable this quarter.
The company told investors that its adjusted operating income would be positive for a second quarter in a row, according to the Financial Times, in a big milestone as it prepares to list on the US stock market this year.
OpenAI has also suggested it will also join the stock market, although Altman said over the weekend that the company would not go public in 2026 due to safety concerns with the technology.
