Trump Goes Full Hoax on AI Existential Risk

Substack · Watch/Read

• Trump has declared AI existential risk a “hoax,” framing it as a plot against data centers and economic growth, driven by what Zvi terms “implication-based epistemology” where undesirable outcomes are labeled as false.
• Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang is criticized for cynically downplaying AI risks to boost chip sales, while a “McCarthyist faction” is launching smear campaigns against AI safety groups like METR and “Effective Altruism” (EA), which Zvi expects to backfire via the Streisand Effect.
• Despite Trump’s rhetoric, many Republicans (e.g., DeSantis, Johnson, Hawley) continue to advocate for AI guardrails, and China’s latest AI Safety Governance Framework shows increasing internal attention to loss-of-control risks, even as they publicly dismiss “fearmongering.”
• Zvi warns against making AI safety a partisan issue, emphasizing that Trump’s positions are fluid and respond differently to concrete threats than to hypotheticals.