Trump Says He Threatened an AI Chief With Jail on 60 Minutes

Trump told 60 Minutes that his administration has already leaned on an AI company leader it believed was up to no good. Asked about executives warning that their own models pose safety risks, he brushed the danger off as overstated: the risk, he said, isn't nearly as real as the industry makes it sound, and it can be managed. He pointed to the Department of Justice as the one doing the managing.

Then he described a specific case. According to Trump, his team got a report that someone was doing something bad with AI, called the person, and delivered a blunt warning: get ready to go to jail, and give your wife a kiss good night. He wouldn't name the person or the company, saying only that it was the leader of one of the big AI firms. After the threat, Trump claimed, the person totally changed everything.

The interview, conducted by Ross Douthat, also caught Trump shifting his own vocabulary. He has previously dismissed the term artificial intelligence as language used by people he considers enemies, but he used it repeatedly on air. He eventually argued for calling it super intelligence instead — or SI, as he put it — because it's a much better name and not artificial, noting that China's Xi Jinping is all in on the concept.

Asked whether he'd team up with Democrats on AI safety, Trump said he absolutely would, adding that he doesn't mind guardrails. His condition: he won't let the US fall into a deep second position. He argued America is leading at number one, while China has no guardrails at all — except that whatever Xi says goes. With him, Trump said, it's pretty strong, but not quite that strong.