U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has criticized prominent figures in the artificial intelligence field for warning about the existential risks the technology poses to humanity, calling such remarks alarmist and unhelpful, and urging the industry to self-regulate and come up with solutions.

In an interview published by Axios on Saturday, Bessent said: "I think we have to be prepared for all scenarios, but on the other hand, some people in AI just cry wolf and have no solutions — that's not leadership."

Anthropic PBC CEO Dario Amodei, OpenAI head Sam Altman and xAI's Elon Musk called in September for slowing the development of the most advanced models, citing the growing risks these models pose to humanity. Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates also warned that AI technology is powerful enough to cause "a billion deaths" and called for government regulation.

U.S. President Donald Trump almost immediately pushed back on those calls, labeling warnings about AI posing risks to humanity a "hoax" and insisting that the United States must keep advancing AI development to maintain its lead. "The people in the labs have to be responsible, I agree with that," Bessent said. "And I think the labs have started to embrace that idea."

No new regulation this week, Trump rejected the idea of introducing new federal regulatory rules during a meeting with several industry executives. Attendees included Elon Musk, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, Meta Platforms Inc.'s Mark Zuckerberg, Palantir Technologies Inc. CEO Alex Karp and OpenAI President Greg Brockman. Trump told reporters at the time: "There's a view that there should be strong self-regulation, and we automatically also have oversight from the Department of Justice, the FBI and others, but self-regulation is very important." In a non-binding agreement reached with Silicon Valley business leaders, he supported having outside institutions assess the safety of AI systems. When asked about calls from AI industry executives for regulation, Bessent told Axios: "Well, then they should slow down." "We want safe acceleration," he said. "The people in the labs have to be responsible, I agree with that."