President Donald Trump used a surprise speakerphone call to NVIDIA chief executive Jensen Huang to set out a clear political position on artificial intelligence: rapid development and the data centres behind it should proceed, despite calls from some technology leaders for greater caution. Trump phoned Huang while he was speaking onstage at the All-In Summit in Los Angeles on Monday morning, and dismissed AI safety concerns as “a hoax”.
The call lasted around five minutes. Trump described data centres as a source of wealth for companies and states, calling them “the oil of the next 20, 25 years”. He said: “The data centers are great, and they make people wealthy, and they make states wealthy.”
Trump also rejected warnings that increasingly capable AI systems could pose wider risks. “The robots are not going to be taking over the world. That's not going to happen,” he said. He argued that AI technology is “bigger than the internet”.
Huang backed Trump’s opposition to a slowdown in development. After Trump linked resistance to data centres and AI development to China and political figures, Huang replied: “You're right. We're not going to let that happen, sir.” Trump then told the NVIDIA chief: “I'm with you all the way.”
The exchange came after a weekend in which prominent figures in AI had publicly taken a different view on the pace of development. Anthropic chief executive Dario Amodei published an essay urging AI companies to slow their work. OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman and SpaceX’s Elon Musk each signalled agreement with that call.
Trump had already singled out Amodei earlier on Monday in repeated posts on Truth Social. He described AI safety concerns as “a hoax” and “a scam”, and wrote that the only guardrails required for AI were “a STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT”.
During the call, Trump said the industry should still act with care. “We have to do things, and we have to do them prudently, but that doesn't mean we're going to stop an industry,” he said. His remarks presented AI safety measures as compatible with continued expansion, while rejecting a broader reduction in the speed of development.
Huang also questioned some of the warnings being made about the technology’s future. “Whistle-blowing is fine. The scientific prediction about the future is less fine because it's not grounded in science, obviously,” he said.
The summit was hosted by venture capitalists behind the All-In podcast, including Chamath Palihapitiya, Jason Calacanis, David Friedberg and David Sacks. Palihapitiya later wrote on X: “This was surreal.”
Trump’s embrace of data-centre construction comes as local opposition remains significant. Recent Gallup polling found that seven in 10 Americans oppose construction of data centres in their area. More than 50% of respondents cited the effect of data centres on environmental resources as a concern.
The president framed such opposition as connected to foreign adversaries, saying China and political people were involved. The call therefore placed the dispute over AI policy in both economic and geopolitical terms. It also underscored a split within the technology industry between executives seeking to slow development and those arguing that the sector should continue to build the infrastructure required for wider deployment.
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