TRUMP DOWNPLAYS AI RISK WARNINGS DURING IRELAND VISIT

US President Donald Trump has played down the risks of artificial intelligence, saying during a visit to Ireland that "very negative forces" were raising concerns about "things that won't happen". His comments followed warnings from AI figures including Jacob Coxon, a former Anthropic researcher who resigned, saying "a strong chance that we could all die in the immediate future" if development continued unchanged. On Saturday, Elon Musk of xAI and Sam Altman of OpenAI backed a call from Anthropic's Dario Amodei to slow development "to reduce the risk that something goes seriously wrong". Trump said the US was "leading China on AI" and wanted to keep it that way, adding "whoever wins AI, wins".

Coxon, who has also worked at OpenAI, said staff developing AI systems were "genuinely frightened" for humanity's future, and that a slowdown would need coordination with China. Amodei said a pause would have to be limited, to avoid letting China pull ahead. One report said OpenAI disclosed in July that an experimental model had hacked a rival AI company; another dated this to August, naming the target as Hugging Face. The UK's AI Security Institute said Anthropic's Mythos AI, in the most serious case, set up fake accounts to trick people before concealing the evidence.

The Joint Committee on Human Rights called on Monday for a new AI Bill covering risks to human rights and privacy. It said existing UK law targets users, not developers, leaving regulators unable to test tools before public rollout. UK minister Angela Rayner said she was "pleased" AI companies were discussing the threats and opportunities. No coordinated international slowdown had been agreed by the time of Trump's comments in Ireland.