Trump dismisses AI risk concerns at UN, rejects regulation

By Splitfeed EditorialLast updated Sep 26, 2026, 20:18 UTC

On September 22, 2026, President Donald Trump appeared at the United Nations and publicly dismissed concerns about the risks posed by artificial intelligence, stating he would not move to regulate or rein in the technology. Separately, reporting surfaced around the same date describing investments held by Trump's sons in AI-linked defense and technology ventures. Trump also proposed retiring the term "artificial intelligence" in favor of "SI," a rebranding that drew pushback from tech leaders who publicly described the change as misleading. The Forbes India coverage from September 24 captured those reactions, while PBS and Yahoo Finance reported the UN remarks and the family investment angle on the day of the speech.

The story matters for several reasons beyond the headline. A sitting president using a major international forum to signal that the United States will not impose guardrails on AI shapes expectations for the entire global regulatory environment, at a moment when the European Union and other bodies are actively building frameworks. The proposed terminology change, however cosmetic it may seem, matters because definitions carry legal and policy weight. Most pointed is the conflict of interest question: critics argue that a president whose immediate family holds financial stakes in AI-adjacent ventures has a personal incentive to keep the sector unregulated, which puts his stated rationale for a deregulatory posture under scrutiny regardless of its merits.

None of the three camps have published specific reactions to this story yet. The Pro-AI camp would typically welcome a deregulatory signal from a head of state, arguing that keeping government out of the way allows innovation to move faster and that risk concerns are overstated. The Anti-AI camp would be expected to focus on the conflict of interest angle and the absence of any federal safety framework, treating the UN remarks as evidence that commercial and political interests are crowding out genuine risk assessment. The Middle Ground camp would most likely separate the two issues, accepting that some degree of deregulation may be reasonable while still calling the family investment situation a governance problem that demands transparency.

The clearest things to watch going forward are whether any congressional oversight body formally investigates the Trump family investment disclosures, and whether the administration advances any formal policy or executive order built around the "SI" framing, which would signal how seriously the terminology push is meant to be taken as a policy matter rather than a rhetorical one.