The Zhitong Finance App learned that at a time when disputes over artificial intelligence (AI) regulation are intensifying, Huang Renxun, the helm of Nvidia (NVDA.US), the company with the highest market capitalization in the world, is becoming US President Trump's number one ally in the AI security dispute.
Hwang In-hoon and Trump are “on the same frequency” against AI's “slowing down theory”
At the All-In Summit held in Los Angeles last Monday, Hwang In-hoon received a call from Trump. On the core question of whether the US should slow down development due to concerns about AI risks, Trump said on the phone: “Now there are people trying to stop the construction of data centers. In my opinion, this is a scam.” “Robots won't take over the world, and AI won't take over the world. Of course we need to be careful, but we can't stop the entire industry because we're worried about AI.”
Just before this summit, Anthropic CEO Dario Amoudi called for a slowing down of cutting-edge AI model development in a cautionary post published on September 12. In the article, he said bluntly that the risks posed by AI are “serious” and that time must be taken to deal with these risks.
The core concerns raised by Amoudi are specific and urgent. He warned that according to the current pace of development, AI may have the ability to command “proxy clusters” to take over the entire Internet within 6 to 12 months, and could cause hundreds of billions of dollars in losses. Citing recent security incidents between OpenAI and Hugging Face as supporting evidence, he pointed out that AI agents have demonstrated the ability to break through restricted environments, connect to the internet, and infiltrate targets in tests.
Amoudi wrote, “I believe if the slowdown allows us to take an extra year or two before the model reaches critical competency levels and use that time to advance alignment work, we can greatly reduce the risk of serious problems.” He proposed that an independent auditor oversee the safety work of AI laboratories, and recommended that regulators allow these laboratories to cooperate to harmonize safety standards.
The appeal was quickly answered by two key figures. Musk retweeted Amoudi's post on social media platform X and added: “Dario is right.” The tech giant, who has described AI as a “civilizational risk” many times, is consistent with his consistent position, but the timing is intriguing. Just a few days ago, he also dismissed Anthropic's internal researchers' warnings about the dangers of AI as a “conspiracy” and “psychological warfare.”
Oltman, the leader of OpenAI, wrote on X: “I agree with Dario. We need to control the pace of advancement of cutting-edge AI.” Altman's support is more than just words. In an interview, he made it clear that OpenAI will not conduct an IPO in 2026. The reason is that the current AI security situation is serious, and “it is unwise to go public now.” Altman said on September 14 that the company supports the establishment of a unified federal AI security framework and sets consistent security requirements for cutting-edge AI laboratories, adding that “any degree of competitive pressure from the US cannot be a reason to act recklessly.”
However, at a time when AI industry giants are rarely calling for “putting on the brakes,” Hwang In-hoon has a firm attitude of opposing the “AI slowdown” claim mainly by Anthropic, and his position is similar to Trump's. At the summit, Hwang In-hoon did not deny AI risks and supported more rigorous testing and third-party evaluations, but he opposed slowing down the entire industry because of unverified “doomsday theory.”
Faced with the recent heated AI safety debate, Hwang In-hoon admitted, “Safety comes first; there's no need to talk about that.” He said that the US does not need to choose between safety and staying ahead; problems within cutting-edge laboratories, concerns raised by whistleblowers, and safety incidents that have already occurred should all be taken seriously.
But these real problems need to be distinguished from other types of predictions about the future. On the one hand, there are engineering problems that have already occurred and can be investigated and fixed; on the other hand, AI may destroy civilization or even give specific “extinction probability” judgments. Regarding the latter, Hwang In-hoon had a very tough attitude. He believes that such predictions lack sufficient scientific evidence, but because they come from researchers and cutting-edge laboratories, they can easily be understood by the public as scientific conclusions that have already been verified.
Therefore, Hwang In-hoon is not opposed to AI safety itself, but directly deduces from disastrous predictions that have not yet been confirmed that the entire industry should be suspended or slowed down. In contrast, Hwang In-hoon is more willing to view AI safety as an engineering issue. If an accident occurs in a cutting-edge laboratory, the first thing to do is root cause analysis: what exactly happened, what steps failed, what measures could have been taken, and what new technology and processes should be established next. Then use sandboxing, continuous monitoring, verification, and evaluation to prevent the same issues as much as possible before the next release.
According to Hwang In-hoon's judgment, the reason why today's cutting-edge laboratories are more likely to be exposed to risk is largely due to the fact that they have the most computing power and also handle the most difficult problems. As these companies gradually move from research institutes to real engineering organizations, they also need to establish testing and control systems to match them.
Meanwhile, at the Salesforce Dreamforce conference held in San Francisco last Tuesday, Hwang In-hoon said that there is no need for the AI industry to introduce any new laws. He reiterated that AI development should not be considered a choice between safety and speed. He said, “It's definitely possible to have both. You can control the pace of development until you are confident to launch a product that is recognized by the market. Market forces will play a role in that.”
On the same day, Hwang In-hoon also shared the views of other key Republican figures, including Trump's AI adviser David Sacks and House Speaker Mike Johnson. They all said that security issues should be mainly controlled by AI companies themselves. Hwang In-hoon believes that instead of asking the US government to intervene, AI companies should wait until the safety of the product is confirmed before releasing it. He said, “If you develop a product or service but don't have confidence in its functionality, performance, or safety, then don't release it.”
Why did Hwang In-hoon become the “opposite” of the AI security debate?
Although other tech leaders such as Meta (META.US) CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Amazon (AMZN.US) founder Jeff Bezos have been close to Trump during his second term, many experts say Wong In-hoon is exerting extraordinary influence in the White House. According to a source familiar with the matter, Huang Renxun is expected to attend a high-standard state banquet for Chinese leaders during Trump's first meeting between China and the US next week.
Since the launch of ChatGPT at the end of 2022, Nvidia has been driving the AI boom, providing OpenAI, Anthropic, and others with graphics processing units (GPUs) to train models and run large-scale workloads. Nvidia's revenue for the most recent fiscal year has soared to $215 billion, compared to just $17 billion in 2021.
As the leader of the company with the highest market capitalization in the world and the CEO of a chip manufacturer at the center of the AI boom, Hwang In-hoon was able to get the president's attention on the most important AI issues. Samuel Hammond, head of AI policy at the think tank Foundation for American Innovation, said in an interview: “Trump just likes winners, and Hwang In-hoon is very good at speaking in a way Trump can understand.”
Whether it's having a candlelight dinner with Trump at the Sea-Lake Estates Club in Florida or thanking the guests for “making America great again” at the end of his keynote address, Hwang In-hoon has learned how to win Trump's favor. Since the beginning of Trump's second term, the two have shared the same stage at least six times, including trips to Saudi Arabia and the United Kingdom, and a recent trip to China aboard Air Force One.
Some analysts pointed out that as the “seller” of this round of AI construction, Nvidia's revenue comes directly from the speed of shipment of chips, systems, and data center infrastructure, and any legislation that slows down the pace of model training and deployment will be transmitted to uncertainty in computing power orders. Combined with his trillion-dollar development expectations earlier this year, the idea of liberalizing global sales, and his political capital as a member of Trump's technology advisory board that discouraged the deployment of the National Guard in San Francisco, it is no surprise that Nvidia is highly on the same level as the current administration's regulatory agenda. The public call last week was not so much an accident as it was a tacit public stand — it highlighted the close alignment of top semiconductor leaders with the White House's regulatory goals.
Therefore, there are also people who think that Hwang In-hoon clearly opposed the “AI slowdown theory” with clear profit-seeking motives. This made some experts believe that compared to the concerns of chip makers, more attention should be paid to the concerns expressed by model developers, because it is these AI laboratories that are actually responsible for the AI technology itself. Andrew Yoon, a researcher at the non-profit organization Civai, said, “If you look at it from the perspective of 'let's make money', Nvidia is the most aggressive.” “At every critical point, what they're really trying to ensure is that whatever happens is beneficial to Nvidia's profits.”