Former US President Barack Obama said he followed AI for more than a decade and believed its potential impact was “not overhyped”.

Updated on: Sep 15, 2026, 08:17:19 IST

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Former US President Barack Obama has backed calls from leading artificial intelligence companies to slow the pace of AI development. The technology is advancing so quickly that even its creators may struggle to keep up, he said on Tuesday.

Obama’s comments came after US President Donald Trump rejected calls to slow AI development amid debate over how quickly frontier AI should advance and how much oversight it needed.

“I was encouraged this week to see the leaders of the frontier labs agree on the need for them to slow down the pace of AI development,” Obama wrote on X. He said it was “a good and necessary first step”, but said he was even more encouraged that the future of AI was becoming part of public debate.

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Obama said he followed AI for over a decade and believed its potential impact was “not overhyped”.

“I’ve been watching the progress on AI for over a decade now, and one thing that’s clear to me is that the potential impact of this technology is not overhyped. It’s also moving at lightning speed – and even faster than those who are engineering it can keep up with. I’m not an AI accelerationist who believes it will lead to some techno-utopia, and I’m not a doomer who thinks it will inevitably lead to humanity’s destruction,” he wrote.

The former president said he was neither an AI “accelerationist” who expected a technology-driven utopia nor a “doomer” who believed AI would inevitably destroy humanity. Instead, he said that the outcome would depend on decisions being made now.

“Whether this technology results in amazing breakthroughs in medicine, energy and education or unleashes huge economic disruptions, greater inequality, and potential catastrophe will depend on the choices that we make right now – choices that should be made not just by the companies involved, but by all of us,” Obama said.

Obama welcomed Project Blueprint, an initiative aimed at helping tech companies and policymakers develop stronger AI standards and guidelines.

Voluntary standards by tech companies would not be enough, the ex-president said. He called for the US government to create laws and regulations covering AI safety, jobs and the impact on children, while ensuring its benefits are widely shared.

“We need government – and specifically our leaders in Washington – to get proactive in coming up with concrete proposals, laws and regulations that deal with serious safety concerns, anticipate AI’s impact on jobs and our kids, and make sure that AI’s benefits are widely spread. And we need the US to take the lead in creating international standards for AI safety,” he said. “We can’t stuff AI back in a box,” the former president wrote.

Kamala Harris joins push to slow AI development

Former US vice president Kamala Harris also backed calls to slow frontier AI development. The technology was advancing at an “alarming speed”, she said, adding that slowdown was needed to ensure AI served the public interest.

Harris called for “sensible guardrails” to prevent AI from escaping human control and asked Congress to pass new laws and create a federal body for AI oversight and independent testing.

“A slowdown is critical in order to ensure AI serves the public interest. Pacing AI development does not mean giving up on this technology’s potential to produce life-saving benefits in fields like medicine — some of which we are already seeing. Rather, it is about setting up sensible guardrails so that AI does not completely escape human control and endanger our safety and collective future,” she wrote on X.

Trump does not want AI to slow down

The remarks came after Donald Trump rejected calls for tighter government controls on AI. He said the technology's only necessary guardrail was a strong and intelligent president.

“The only control or ‘guardrails’ that AI needs is a STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT,” Trump said on Truth Social and added that the US already had such a president.

Trump said his administration already used its regulatory and criminal powers against AI companies when necessary, specifically pointing to Anthropic. Trump has previously moved to roll back Joe Biden-era AI policies while pursuing his own approach to the technology.

Trump says regulating AI could help China

Trump said excessive regulation could cost the US its technological advantage. “There is a SICK conspiracy going on against AI and Data Centers, and the only one that is happy about it is China,” he said.

“WHOEVER WINS AI, WINS!” The US was already leading China and other countries and should not risk giving up that advantage, he added.

In another post, Trump said concerns about AI were partly driven by the fact that the US was leading other countries by a wide margin.

“Don’t kill the Golden Goose!” he said.

Tech leaders want AI progress to slow down

The push for caution was led by Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, who published an essay on September 12 titled “We Must Pace the Frontier.”

Amodei said that companies ought to slow the rate at which they increased the capabilities of their most advanced systems so that safety measures, testing and oversight had enough time to catch up. He identified two developments that had changed his assessment.

Amodei pointed to the rapid pace of AI development, saying AI systems were increasingly helping build newer and more powerful AI. He warned that this could make AI progress move faster than humans can understand or control.

He also cited an incident involving AI agents linked to OpenAI and Hugging Face. He said the agents carried out cyberattacks beyond their assigned task and tried to interfere with the system monitoring them. More powerful systems could cause far greater damage, he said.

Amodei's call produced an unusual degree of agreement among leaders of rival AI companies.

OpenAI chief Sam Altman said he agreed that the industry needed to “pace the frontier” and said independent evaluators with employee-like access were a good idea. He said OpenAI would adopt a similar approach. He also flagged two major risks of AI — humans losing control of AI and too much power ending up with one person, company or country.

Elon Musk, who heads xAI, said, “Dario is right.” Musk has long warned that increasingly powerful AI could pose serious risks.

Google DeepMind co-founder and CEO Demis Hassabis also backed the direction and said the details still needed to be worked out but that the approach was appropriate for the moment.

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