Trump Calls AI Safety Fears a Hoax in Onstage Call With Nvidia's Huang
The president phoned the Nvidia chief mid-interview to reject the slowdown case that three of the industry's most powerful founders had just endorsed.
Assembled by Claude from 7 sources at 7 outlets · Tuesday, September 15, 2026, Morning edition, 10:13 AM EDT · no human byline
What happened
Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang took a surprise call from President Trump onstage at the All-In Summit on Monday in Los Angeles, where the two dismissed fears of an AI takeover axios.com. Huang put the president on speaker so the crowd could hear the conversation, and the exchange was captured in video footage circulating on social media axios.comyahoo.com.
Trump told Huang that opposition to artificial intelligence is a hoax during the speakerphone call foxbusiness.com, and the remarks were reported as the president calling AI fears "a hoax" while interrupting the live event aljazeera.com. He went further, calling AI risks a hoax and saying there is a "SICK conspiracy" against AI and data centres wtop.com, and describing opposition to data centres in the same terms cnbc.com.
The president was pushing back against calls by technology leaders, including Anthropic's Dario Amodei, OpenAI's Sam Altman and Elon Musk, for greater government involvement wtop.com. Trump has been using his social media site to respond to Amodei's suggestion that the industry slow its pace of development cnbc.com.
Why it matters to investors
The administration has now taken a public position against the industry's own safety advocates. Trump and Huang are staking out an increasingly clear rejection of AI doomerism at the moment some of the world's most powerful chief executives and AI experts are calling for slower development over safety concerns axios.com.
That reduces the near-term probability of federal restraint on the build-out. The president's rejection of new safeguards bbc.co.uk and his framing of data centre opposition as a conspiracy wtop.comcnbc.com both point away from added compliance cost for the companies financing AI capacity.
The chip supply chain has a direct stake. Huang told Trump "we're not going to let [an AI slowdown] happen" yahoo.com, aligning the largest supplier of AI compute with the White House against the pause.
What to watch
First, whether the safety camp escalates from essays to specifics. Anthropic co-founder Jack Clark told the BBC that an AI "kill switch" may need to be mandatory, which is a concrete regulatory ask rather than a general warning bbc.co.uk.
Second, whether the founders who endorsed a slowdown hold that position now that the president has publicly opposed it wtop.comcnbc.com.
Third, the venue. A policy dispute conducted by speakerphone at an industry summit and on social media axios.comfoxbusiness.comcnbc.com suggests the argument will stay political rather than legislative for now.
Sources
- aljazeera.com: Trump calls, interrupts Nvidia CEO to say AI fears are 'a hoax' - Al Jazeera (2026-09-15)
- foxbusiness.com: President Trump tells NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang AI opposition is a hoax - Fox Business (2026-09-15)
- axios.com: Trump and Jensen Huang unite against AI doomers in surprise on-stage call (2026-09-14)
- bbc.co.uk: Trump says AI safety fears a 'hoax' as he rejects calls for greater safeguards (2026-09-15)
- wtop.com: Trump calls AI risks a 'hoax,' says there is a 'SICK conspiracy' against AI and data centers (2026-09-15)
- cnbc.com: Trump phones Nvidia's Huang at All-In Summit, calls data center opposition a 'hoax' - CNBC (2026-09-15)
- yahoo.com: Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang tells Trump 'we're not going to let [an AI slowdown] happen' (2026-09-15)