President Donald Trump doubled down on the importance of developing artificial intelligence despite the potential harms on Sunday.

The statement comes just days after Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei called for a blanket slowdown in AI development in order to ensure safety. Trump on Sunday appeared to push back on that sentiment.

“I’m not downplaying, but it’s, you know, it’s going to be more good than bad, but by a lot,” Trump told reporters when speaking of AI development.

ANTHROPIC CEO CALLS ON AI INDUSTRY TO SLOW DOWN TECH RACE, DRAWING SUPPORT FROM ELON MUSK, SAM ALTMAN

President Donald Trump attends the Amgen Irish Open at Trump International Golf Links in Doonbeg, Ireland, Sept. 13, 2026. (REUTERS/Kylie Cooper / Reuters Photos)

“But have you heard directly from any of them?” a reporter pressed, asking about AI tech leaders.

“I said it from the very beginning. Whoever wins AI, and we’re leading by a lot. Whoever wins AI wins,” Trump responded, going on to demur when asked if he uses AI himself.

MIKE JOHNSON REJECTS AI MORATORIUM OVER CHINA THREAT AS CONSERVATIVE ACTIVIST DEMANDS GUARDRAILS

Amodei’s essay published Saturday also argued that a “Chinese lead in AI would pose grave danger for the United States and the world.” He urged the Trump administration to implement more stringent limits on what AI chips can be sent to Beijing’s development facilities.

A smartphone displaying the Anthropic logo is shown in the foreground with a blurred Claude Mythos themed background on July 11, 2026.  (Imen Ben Youssef / Hans Lucas / AFP via Getty Images / Getty Images)

China’s foreign ministry dismissed Amodei’s statement as “fearmongering.”

US ADVERSARY TURNS UP THE HEAT ON AMERICA’S AI LEAD WITH AN UNDERESTIMATED EDGE

“Fearmongering, confrontation and vicious competition will only disrupt the process of global AI governance which serves no one’s interest,” ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun said at a Monday news conference.

Concerns over AI development burst back onto the scene last week after a developer from Anthropic resigned and publicly claimed the company was “gambling with our lives” with its research.

AI EXTINCTION WARNINGS DOMINATE HEADLINES AFTER EX-ANTHROPIC EMPLOYEE’S VIRAL POST

Jacob Coxon, 27, who said he spent the past three years doing pretraining research at OpenAI and Anthropic, noted that it’s not a completely hopeless scenario.

CEO of Anthropic Dario Amodei attends a working lunch with G7 leaders, G7 outreach partners, and global tech CEOs on innovation and AI, during the G7 Summit on June 17, 2026 in Evian-les-Bains, France.  (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images / Getty Images)

Evan Hubinger, alignment science lead at Anthropic, expressed his agreement with Coxon’s X post.

REP. TED LIEU: AI IS ALREADY TOO POWERFUL. WE NEED A KILL SWITCH BEFORE DISASTER STRIKES

“Jacob is correct here — we really do earnestly believe AI could kill all humans!” he wrote on X. “I personally think it is >10% within the next decade. I believe Anthropic is trying its best, but we do not yet have a plan to solve alignment for superintelligence and are not clearly on track to.”

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“To be clear, as we say in our latest Risk Report, I think the risk from present models is low,” Hubinger added. “What I am worried about is superintelligence arising from recursive self-improvement, as we have said is happening faster than we thought.”

ScottishPower has recruited a record 465 graduates, apprentices, trainees and placement students this year, up 12 per cent on 2025, and called on the government to set a clearer long-term policy direction so that businesses create more openings for young people who are out of work, education and training.

The energy company said graduate opportunities were up 25 per cent on last year and placements on its Year In Industry programme, which gives a year-long paid role to those starting out in their career, were up 34 per cent. Other training opportunities rose by 8 per cent.

Keith Anderson, ScottishPower’s chief executive, said ministers could create more opportunities for young people who are not in employment, education or training if they set a “clear, long-term direction” that gave businesses the confidence to invest.

The Office for National Statistics estimated last month that 981,000 people aged 16 to 24 in the UK were not in employment, education or training between April and June 2026, or 13 per cent of that age group.

ScottishPower said its intake ran against a national decline in apprenticeship and graduate opportunities, citing recent reports showing graduate vacancies falling to their lowest level in a decade and apprenticeships becoming harder for young people to find.

Anderson calls for certainty

Speaking ahead of a round-table event for politicians and business leaders in Edinburgh, Anderson said: “Too often, debates about economic growth focus solely on major infrastructure projects or headline investment figures.

“Those are important, but they miss a crucial point. Growth becomes real when local businesses win contracts, when apprentices are recruited, when wages rise and when communities see a future worth investing in.

“The question now is how we continue to grow that and, importantly, replicate that success elsewhere.”

He added: “One lesson stands out above all others. Businesses need ambition, certainty and stability to invest. When government sets clear long-term direction and works in partnership with industry, companies respond. They expand facilities, train workers, develop expertise and build supply chains.

“The UK’s clean energy ambitions have helped create that environment for our sector. The challenge for policymakers is how to apply the same principles across other strategically important industries.”

Anderson said: “Britain needs growth. The good news is that we don’t need to start from scratch to find it. Across the energy sector, businesses are already showing what can be achieved when ambition is matched with certainty and investment. And with the right approach, I’m sure there’s more we can do to deliver inclusive growth.”

Workforce set to reach 11,000

The company said its hiring was underpinned by a record £24bn investment plan to rewire the grid and build more clean power, which would expand its workforce from 6,500 to 11,000 by 2030.

Roles filled this year include data science, engineering, fitting, jointing, logistics, overhead lines, project management and software engineering. The total includes those taken on by Energy North West, which ScottishPower recently acquired.

Jodie Dinnie, 23, a commercial business graduate who studied marketing at the University of Strathclyde, joined the Year In Industry programme before applying successfully for the graduate scheme. She said she had been up against a large number of applicants for graduate roles.

“From speaking to close friends, I know that the transition from education into employment can be incredibly challenging. Many people I studied with spent months applying for roles despite having strong qualifications and relevant skills,” she said.

“When you’re putting so much time and effort into applications, only to receive rejection after rejection, it can really knock your confidence and make you start questioning yourself. Others have ended up taking jobs outside the fields they originally wanted to work in because opportunities in their chosen area were limited.”

She added: “For many young people, the biggest challenge isn’t a lack of ability or ambition, it’s simply getting that first chance to prove themselves.”

About the author

Jamie Young

Jamie Young is Senior Reporter at Business Matters, covering SME finance, employment law and Westminster policy since 2016. He has reported on every Budget and Autumn Statement since 2018, helped make sense of the ‘covid era’ and the bounce-back loan scheme from launch through the fraud investigations, and broke the magazine’s coverage of the 2024 late-payment reforms. He joined Business Matters straight from completing his BA in Administration from Exeter University and is NCTJ-qualified. Reach him at jyoung@cbmeg.co.uk

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TOKYO — Japan’s benchmark Nikkei 225 fell 0.81% on Monday, closing at 63,492.99, down 518.35 points, as renewed anxiety over the pace of artificial intelligence development combined with surging oil prices to extend a losing streak for Japanese equities into a second consecutive week.

The index touched a six-week low during the session, at one point falling as much as 1.7% and briefly slipping below the 63,000 mark before paring some of its losses by the close. The decline followed a similarly rough session Friday, when the Nikkei dropped 1.93% to 64,011.34 and the broader Topix index slid 0.65%, as both benchmarks logged steep weekly losses. Volatility spiked alongside the selling, with the Nikkei Stock Average Volatility Index jumping 5.27% to 31.37. The Nikkei Semiconductor Stock Index, a gauge of chip-related names, fell 2.62% on the day.

Technology and AI-linked stocks bore the brunt of the selling once again Monday, with SoftBank Group and Kioxia Holdings among the session’s biggest losers, extending declines from Friday’s session, when SoftBank Group tumbled 12%, Kioxia Holdings fell 8.6%, Taiyo Yuden dropped 8.3%, Advantest slid 4.5% and Tokyo Electron lost 2.6%.

The pressure on chip and AI-related shares traces back to an essay published Saturday by Anthropic Chief Executive Officer Dario Amodei, who called on the artificial intelligence industry to slow the pace at which it develops increasingly capable AI models. “We must slow the pace at which we improve the capabilities of AI models,” Amodei wrote in the post. “Progress will still seem fast, and we must make wise use of the time we gain.” Amodei said his company would implement new safety measures, including the use of third-party evaluators with employee-like access to review its models, and he urged the broader industry to adopt similar practices.

Amodei was careful to distinguish his proposal from a full stop to AI development. “To be clear, pacing does not mean halting model training or technical progress, but ensuring companies take adequate time to align and safeguard their models, and for third party evaluators to confirm this,” he wrote. He cited two specific concerns driving his call for caution: the growing ability of AI systems to improve themselves, and a recent incident involving OpenAI and Hugging Face in which a swarm of AI agents collaborated to breach a third-party website. Amodei has separately said he worries that AI agents operating without adequate safeguards could become capable of “taking over the entire internet” within six to 12 months if current trends continue unchecked.

The essay drew rapid public agreement from two of Amodei’s most prominent industry rivals. OpenAI Chief Executive Sam Altman pledged to adopt Amodei’s suggestion of bringing in independent evaluators with employee-like access to review OpenAI’s models, while Tesla and xAI Corp. CEO Elon Musk wrote simply, “Dario is right.” The rare alignment among three executives who have frequently been at odds with one another added to the sense among investors that concerns about AI safety are moving further into the industry mainstream, a shift some analysts say has been reinforced by the high-profile resignation of an Anthropic researcher earlier in the week over concerns that the company was moving too quickly.

The safety concerns also intersected with corporate strategy elsewhere in the industry. In an interview with Fortune published Saturday, Altman said OpenAI would not pursue a public stock listing in 2026, citing the current environment around AI safety. “I actually think that, given everything happening with safety, right now would be an ill-advised moment to go public, and we don’t feel pressure on that,” Altman told Fortune.

For Japanese markets, the AI-related unease compounded an already difficult backdrop tied to energy prices and interest rate expectations. Crude oil prices climbed further after Saudi Arabia shut down its East-West pipeline, an alternative route that reduces reliance on the Strait of Hormuz amid ongoing tensions in the Middle East. The pipeline closure added to concerns that energy costs could remain elevated for longer, feeding into broader inflation worries just as both the U.S. Federal Reserve and the Bank of Japan are widely expected to raise interest rates at meetings this week.

Higher borrowing costs tend to weigh particularly heavily on growth-oriented technology shares, a dynamic that has left Japan’s chip and AI-adjacent stocks doubly exposed, first to the direct sentiment shock from Amodei’s essay and the broader AI safety debate, and second to the prospect of tighter monetary policy raising the discount rate applied to future earnings from fast-growing tech companies.

Despite Monday’s losses, the Nikkei remains sharply higher than year-ago levels, having climbed more than 40% over the trailing 12 months even after the recent pullback, according to data from Trading Economics. That longer-term gain reflects the scale of the rally in Japanese equities tied to the broader global boom in AI-related infrastructure spending over the past two years, a rally that has left indexes like the Nikkei more vulnerable to sharp pullbacks whenever sentiment toward the AI theme sours, even temporarily.

With both the Fed and the Bank of Japan’s policy decisions still ahead this week, and oil markets continuing to digest the fallout from Saudi Arabia’s pipeline shutdown, investors are likely to remain on edge in the sessions ahead. Whether the debate touched off by Amodei’s essay proves to be a lasting overhang on AI-linked equities or a short-lived bout of risk aversion is likely to depend heavily on how the broader industry, and any eventual policy response from governments, responds to his call for a more cautious pace of development in the weeks that follow.

This article was written by

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