There's been a lot of talk about AI 'slowdown' over the last few days, since Anthropic's CEO Dario Amodei said the industry needs to slow down to allow for better safety measures to be implemented, with these comments themselves riding in the wake of recent cybersecurity threats. Seemingly every big tech bro and even world leaders have been keen to discuss the issue. Naturally, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, one of the biggest beneficiaries of the AI boom has been keen to say something on the issue and urge against slowing things down. His comments, however, were interspersed with similar sentiments from US President Donald Trump, who called the CEO while the latter was on-stage for the All-In Podcast (via CNBC). Huang expressed gratitude for Trump's calling AI doomsaying a hoax: "There’s a lot of complexity and the fact of the matter is you saw through all of that, and we're all just really grateful." In a previous post on Truth Social, Trump had explained: "The only control or “guardrails” that AI needs is a STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT, and the U.S.A. has that, in spades! The Trump Administration has stopped AI “people” from doing bad, or potentially bad, “things,“ like Dario (Anthropic!), who is now pretending to be a “perfect little angel” - and we will continue to do so! We already have tremendous CRIMINAL and REGULATORY power over these companies! There is a SICK conspiracy going on against AI and Data Centers, and the only one that is happy about it is China. WHOEVER WINS AI, WINS!"On his call with the Nvidia CEO, he said: "I'm telling you it's all a hoax. The datacenters are great... they're just playing right into the hands of a lot of people that don't want to see it happen... We're not going to let that happen. It's a hoax."Huang: "You're right. We're not going to let that happen, sir."Trump: "We have to do things and we have to do it prudently, but that doesn't mean we're going to stop an industry... I didn't know how you felt about it. I assumed you felt the same way as me."Huang again: "Yes sir... We're going to make sure that everybody wins in the AI race in America. Every industry, every company, every state, every people." (Image credit: Bridget Bennett/Bloomberg via Getty Images (left) / GummyBone via Getty Images (right))Perhaps as clarification or just reiteration, the president took to Truth Social to say, "I am the Hoax Buster, and I’m right now breaking another Hoax—That AI is going to take over, consume, and destroy the World, and that Robots will be marching into our Cities, and getting rid of us all!"To my eyes and ears, all of this is a misnomer anyway. The AI boom is causing problems in the here and now, from ever-increasing energy use to ever-decreasing brain use, increasing use of AI for creative tasks that humans once enjoyed doing, and, of course, increasingly expensive tech thanks to the AI industry-induced global memory shortage, to name just a few. Much of the actual discussion around safety and pacing AI is, of course, prudent. But my problem is with the framing of discussions in the wake of this. Talk of whether or not AI will destroy the world conveniently serves to downplay and distract from these more immediate and very real concerns. As does the idea that we (the West, and more specifically the US) are in an arms race that must be won.If everyone is busy thinking about whether or not the AI industry could pose grand threats to national security and whether it could end society and therefore needs to slow down, nobody is busy talking about the fact that we have lots of choices over whether and how the AI industry should change society regardless. Even if AI doesn't pose a big cybersecurity threat, for instance, we should still have a choice over the potential upheaval it is causing. But without discussions centred on this, the industry rolls on regardless.