Trump Rejects AI Guardrails, Dismissing Safety Concerns as Industry Divides

President Donald Trump rejected calls for artificial intelligence safeguards on September 14, 2026, dismissing concerns about the technology's rapid advancement as a "hoax" and stating that only strong presidential leadership—not regulatory guardrails—is necessary to manage AI development risks. The rejection came after Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei and OpenAI's Sam Altman proposed formal safety measures on September 12, citing growing concerns about recursive self-improvement, where AI systems autonomously develop their successors. Amodei's proposal specifically called for embedding third-party evaluators—such as the nonprofit organization METR—with employee-level access to AI companies to verify safety practices and monitor training processes.