The CEOs of the major Artificial Intelligence companies say it’s a potential existential threat to humanity.

The president’s statement followed a weekend essay from Dario Amodei, the chief executive of Anthropic, calling for a global slowdown of artificial intelligence development. Days earlier, one of Anthropic’s researchers quit and went public over his fears about the safety of the technology.

Other A.I. chiefs have voiced concerns of their own in recent days. Demis Hassabis, the chairman of Google DeepMind; Elon Musk of SpaceX; and Sam Altman of OpenAI have all endorsed calls for a slower pace.

Trump, on the other hand, is all in.

Trump’s obsession with his self-proclaimed “High IQ” is the stuff of legends. Smart people tend to be recognized as smart because they do, think and say smart things, not because they proclaim themselves “STRONG AND SMART.” Indeed, the compulsion to utter such inanities is a sign of desperation and neediness by those who are never going to be recognized as smart otherwise. Yet Trump not only does so, but claims that he is all that’s needed to protect humanity. Then again, nobody knows more about technology than Trump.

Of course, Trump simultaneously contends that it’s not a threat anyway, but just another hoax, as are so many things that make Trump feel badly about himself.

Trump’s grasp of technology is, to be kind, extremely limited, suggesting that his views on any tech matter are, well, unconvincing.

Mr. Trump’s own grasp of the technology is superficial, according to people close to him. He is an extreme late adopter of tech: He began text messaging only in 2022, and his staff prints out social media posts for him to read.

According to the tech CEOs, recursive self-improvement by Large Language Models and adaptive refinement mean that AI will evolve beyond human control at some unknown pace and in unknown ways, some of which could produce malicious acts that could exterminate humanity, or at least do humanity serious harm. When this will happen remains something of a mystery, since much of what AI is capable of doing morphs in ways and at times outside their creators’ control.

On the other hand, as Congress wades into the question of AI regulation, is it any more technologically astute or capable of crafting viable technological guardrails than the guy who has Natalie Harp type his twits?

On the third hand, if the United States decides to put the reins on AI for the sake of humanity, will that serve any useful purpose if others, like China, Russia, North Korea or Iran, decide to employ its capacity for existential harm to achieve world hegemony?

Or is the existential threat of AI another foray into tech hysteria, whether something so improbable or nonexistent that Trump is, at least this time, right to call it a hoax? And even if it’s not quite a hoax, wouldn’t it be better if the threat to humanity was in American hands rather than Chinese?

Some argue that the fact that AI creators fear its potential for harm means that there’s something there worthy of extreme concern, and that we need to get ahead of it before it’s so far ahead of us that we’re incapable of doing anything about it. Others suggest that this is just a ploy by the big AI guys to keep other, newer ventures out of the marketplace by creating regulations that will serve as barriers to entry so that they alone can reap the massive profits AI seems certain to bring them.

Of course, given the current Congress’ reluctance to take any action that isn’t blessed by their savior, in conjunction with Trump’s very clear message that he, being that “STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT,” is all we need to keep us safe and warm at night, there won’t be much will to address the potential for harm. With Trump as the “guardrail” of humanity, what could possibly go wrong?

MUST SEE: Amazing moment as President Trump calls Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang while he’s on stage at the All-In Summit.@POTUS on AI Doomerism: “I’m telling you, it’s all a hoax… and we’re not going to let that happen.” pic.twitter.com/ZP8cCaSMqG

— The All-In Podcast (@theallinpod) September 14, 2026

Is the threat real? Is there a need to regulate it? How would regulation by the United States work even if we did, with a bunch of dotards in charge in a world  where others don’t share our concerns? Isn’t it good enough that stable genius Trump will protect us? Or are we screwed no matter what?

*Tuesday Talk rules apply.