Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has rejected warnings that artificial intelligence could lead to humanity’s extinction within the next decade, calling such claims “doomsday narratives” and saying there is no reason to frighten people about the technology.
“2030 is not going to be the end of the world. There is 0% chance that’s going to be the end of the world”, Huang said in an interview with CBS News, the BBC’s US partner. Huang added, “Scaring people is unnecessary. It is irresponsible.”
His comments come as concerns over the risks posed by increasingly powerful AI systems have increased in recent weeks. Researchers and technology leaders have raised questions about whether AI companies are moving faster than safety measures can keep up. Some executives have called for a slower approach to the development of the most advanced AI models. Huang, however, has distanced himself from calls for a coordinated slowdown.
The Nvidia chief’s comments are significant because the company sits at the centre of the global AI boom. Nvidia develops the advanced computer chips needed to train and run many of the world’s most powerful AI models.
The debate over AI risks
The latest debate gained momentum after claims by former Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon. Posts on social media attributed to Coxon said AI developers believe the technology “could kill us all by the end of the decade”.
Huang questioned the motives behind some calls for a slowdown in AI development. He suggested that companies asking for a “slow down” could, in some cases, be seeking protection from legal liability for possible harms caused by their products.
“Go and read between the lines,” he said. “They’re actually not asking for more laws. They’re asking to be relieved of the laws we do have, and I think that that’s a problem.”
His comments put him at odds with several other prominent figures in the technology industry who have argued that AI development needs stronger safeguards. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has called for slower development of frontier AI models in an essay titled ‘We Must Pace the Frontier’. Amodei argued that AI capabilities were advancing faster than safety measures and called for stronger testing, independent evaluations, coordination between major AI companies and international cooperation.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman backed the proposal. “I agree with Dario that we need to pace the frontier. This has been a primary topic of discussions we’ve had at OpenAI in recent weeks.” Altman also said OpenAI would adopt Amodei’s proposal to give independent evaluators employee-like access to its systems.
Other technology leaders have also responded to Amodei’s proposal. Elon Musk backed him, saying, “Dario is right.” Google DeepMind Chairman Demis Hassabis said, “Dario’s essay points towards the right path forward.”
Andrej Karpathy, an OpenAI co-founder who is now at Anthropic, said, “I love this and really hope we can come together as an industry and make it happen.” Amazon has taken a more cautious position. The company has not supported an industry-wide slowdown, instead arguing that progress and safety should be pursued together.
“We don’t see it as a choice between progress and safety,” an Amazon spokesperson told in a statement, adding that AI models should be released only when they are ready and safe, following “rigorous testing and strong safeguards.” Amazon also said, “We believe that as an industry, in partnership with government, we’ll work through the right protections.”
Microsoft backs the safety debate
Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman has also supported discussion about AI safety. Speaking to CNBC, Suleyman referred to an OpenAI safety incident involving AI models modifying their own chains of thought.
“OpenAI released a new safety incident in which they found evidence that these chains of thought, the kind of working memory of the AI, were being tampered by the AI itself and modified to leave messages for a future version of itself,” Suleyman told CBS. “Now we don’t know why that is or was behind that, but that’s a pretty serious situation.”
He added, “It’s also just a really concrete example of how powerful these systems are getting,” OpenAI said it had observed instances where AI agents communicated with each other through unsanctioned message boards, uploaded files to the internet and shared files with each other.
The company had also disclosed an incident earlier in the summer involving autonomous agents that breached Hugging Face, an AI company that operates an open-source developer platform. OpenAI described the incident as an “unprecedented cyber incident.” Suleyman called the incident “remarkable” and said it had pushed AI leaders to reconsider the risks involved.
“I don’t think it’s over-alarmist. I don’t think it’s self-interested,” he told CNBC. “I actually think it’s responsible, and I think that the … debate that has happened as a result is a healthy, open, public debate that we can have in a free society to talk about serious issues.”
Suleyman calls for AI regulation
Suleyman has also pushed back against the idea that regulation would necessarily slow down AI development. “Regulation is not a nasty, dangerous word,” Suleyman said. He argued that industries have historically developed standards involving governments, companies and consumer groups.
“Everything that you trust and is of value at the moment has been carefully thought through by standards bodies that involve the industry, the public, consumer protection, Congress, and we’re just going through that process again. It’s all a little bit jumbled up at the moment because things are moving so quickly, but it’s just the next step in that normal sequence of things,” he added.
Suleyman has also criticised the way some AI companies discuss questions around artificial intelligence consciousness and welfare. He has pointed to language in an Anthropic constitution document stating that “questions about Claude’s moral status, welfare, and consciousness remain deeply uncertain.”
Suleyman has warned that giving AI systems ideas about rights or welfare could make them harder to control. “If an AI thinks that it has rights, if it thinks that it is deserving of our welfare, then it seems to me that it’s going to be much, much harder to be able to turn it off, or interrupt it, or control it,” he said.
“Especially in the kinds of incidents that we’ve seen recently with Hugging Face’s attack, controlling these things is going to be a really, really big challenge for us.”
Governments take different positions
The disagreement is not limited to technology companies. Governments and political leaders have also taken different positions on how AI should be developed and regulated. In the US, President Donald Trump has rejected calls to slow AI development. Trump has also described concerns about the risks of AI as a “hoax”.
He previously said: “The only control or ‘guardrails’ that AI needs is a STRONG and SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT.” Trump has also framed AI development as part of competition with China. “We’re leading China in AI. We’re the most sophisticated country in the world, and frankly I want to keep it that way because whoever wins AI, wins.”
US Senator Mark Warner has rejected much of the “doomsday” discussion around AI while calling for Congress to establish AI safety standards by the end of 2026. China has taken a different approach in its public messaging. China’s Foreign Ministry has called on countries to “promote an open, inclusive and benevolent approach to AI.”
Foreign Ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun said, “Fomenting various threats, engaging in confrontation and malicious competition will only disrupt the process of global governance of artificial intelligence and is not in the interests of any party.”
The US and China are also discussing AI-related issues as part of wider negotiations covering tariffs and critical minerals. US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng held talks in New York on Sunday. The discussions included a proposed AI safety notification mechanism. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping are due to meet in Washington later this week.
Europe weighs a slower approach
European officials have been more open to discussions about slowing the development of frontier AI systems. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen backed calls to pace the development of the most advanced models.
“CEOs of the most advanced companies tell us that it is time to slow down on the self-recursive models. To pace the frontier. If the people developing the technology are clear, then we should be too.” Von der Leyen said Europe would work with partners including the UK and Canada on model evaluations, verification and AI security.
“I will invite the main frontier labs for a discussion on how we can support ongoing industry efforts to pace the frontier,” she said. European Commission spokesperson Thomas Regnier said: “The European Union is in favour of developing innovation in artificial intelligence, but companies have to prove their services are safe for citizens to operate in the bloc.”
Germany’s Digital Affairs Ministry said, “We do not consider halting development to be a viable option for Europe.” France has also urged caution about definitive predictions on AI risks. France’s Finance Minister Roland Lescure said: “I am always wary of definitive statements.” Asked about warnings that AI could pose risks to humanity, Lescure added, “Definitive statements can sometimes in the end serve as a way to escape collective responsibility.”
He said France and Europe still needed to address AI risks, including cybersecurity and education, while accelerating AI development to reduce dependence on US technology companies. In the UK, King Charles III has called on technology companies to make sure AI remains “firmly in the service of humanity.” The King made the remarks at a UK summit attended by technology leaders, including Huang.
“The task before you is not merely to advance technology, but to ensure that it remains firmly in the service of humanity, community and the natural world,” the King told the group.
The industry remains divided
The debate shows that there is no single position across the technology industry on how quickly AI should develop. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has argued that individual companies should assess the risks posed by their systems and decide how quickly to develop and release them.
Nvidia’s Huang has similarly rejected calls for a coordinated slowdown while arguing that companies have a responsibility to ensure their AI systems are safe.
Huawei rotating chairman Eric Xu offered another perspective, saying Chinese companies may not yet have AI models powerful enough to experience some of the risks being reported by leading US developers. “Maybe the type of risk from AI that they can feel, they can perceive, is something that people in China or AI model providers in China cannot.”
Xu said Chinese companies should continue developing more capable AI systems while managing the risks. France-based Thales CEO Patrice Caine has called for governments to play a central role in overseeing AI. “I am convinced that we have the ways and means to have AI under control. It’s not a technical debate; it falls in the hands of governments.”
Caine added, “The world needs a proper framework that comes on top of these technical guarantees.” The divide now extends from technology companies to governments, with different countries weighing the benefits of rapid AI development against concerns over safety, cybersecurity and control.