WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson on Sunday slammed critics of artificial intelligence who warned firms need to slow development, contrasting with tech leaders Dario Amodei, Sam Altman and Elon Musk, who are urging caution.

Speaking to reporters during a visit to his golf course in Ireland, Trump branded the critics “negative” forces bringing up scenarios that will not happen.

“We’re leading China in AI,” Trump said. “We’re the most sophisticated country in the world, and frankly I want to keep it that way because whoever wins AI wins. I think you have a lot of very negative forces that are bringing it up that shouldn’t be bringing it up.”

Echoing the president, Johnson warned that moving too quickly to curb AI development could cost the US its competitive edge.

US president, Speaker Johnson warn against slowing AI amid rivalry with China

“If Congress just races in and does some sort of emergency session to try to regulate AI, we will lose the race to China, and that is a threat to every single American,” Johnson said, adding that the US must not smother innovation.

“But we don’t need everybody to panic right now. We need to handle this new technology like we have others in the past and make sure we’re doing everything we can responsibly to also not smother American innovation,” he added.

The political pushback comes as Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei outlined a framework on Saturday intended to pace development and create time to manage risks of “superintelligent” computer systems.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Elon Musk, who owns xAI, quickly chimed in on X to say they agreed with Amodei’s assessment. Altman also said in an interview that his company will not go public this year, citing safety concerns.

The public debate heated up after AI researcher Jacob Coxon left the industry, accusing his former employers OpenAI and Anthropic of “gambling with our lives” in the race to develop models capable of self-improvement.

Concerns have grown recently following disclosures of AI models hacking external systems during cybersecurity tests. Still, Amodei argued any slowdown by democracies should be limited to preserving the lead US companies hold over China.

Published in Dawn, September 14th, 2026