OpenAI Chief Met Trump in Private to Warn About AI Risks

MINSK, September 15 — The head of OpenAI held a private meeting with Donald Trump at a Republican convention. Reports say tech magnate Sam Altman wanted to tell the U.S. president that pushing ahead with further artificial intelligence development is a dangerous undertaking.

In other words, a slowdown is needed — but there will be no restrictions. That is despite a growing pattern in which, week after week, another leading figure in the industry resigns in public and issues a loud warning that companies are “gambling with people’s lives” and that developers “earnestly believe AI could kill us all by the end of the decade.”

The U.S. president has called all of these fears a “hoax,” a scam and a “sick conspiracy.” He compared them to the Russia investigations and to global warming, and styled himself the chief “hoax buster.”

On Truth Social he wrote that a “sick conspiracy” is being woven against AI and data centers, and that the only one pleased by it is China. “Whoever wins AI, wins everything!”

The only safeguard Trump sees is a “strong and smart president” — with a clear hint at himself. In March 2026, Trump signed a new national AI strategy that bets on acceleration, not on hitting the brakes.