WASHINGTON-President Trump and White House AI adviser David Sacks this weekend defended the administration's strategy of minimal regulation after the heads of the nation's top artificial-intelligence companies endorsed a coordinated slowdown in the technology's development.

"We can put up guardrails, and we can do this and that, but I think you have a lot of negative forces that are bringing it up," Trump told reporters Sunday while traveling in Ireland. "And they're bringing up things that won't happen."

The president reiterated his belief that the U.S. must outpace China in building AI, saying "whoever wins AI wins."

Alarm over AI surged this week after Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon quit the company and issued a viral warning about world-ending consequences of the technology if it grew out of control. Sacks and others in Silicon Valley have said Coxon coordinated with nonprofit groups that Republicans see as hostile to the industry because of the groups' focus on existential risk and support for government controls. Coxon has said he acted on his own.

Trump's comments threw into question whether tech companies' calls to tap the brakes on development would have government support.

On Saturday, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, Sam Altman of OpenAI, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk and Demis Hassabis of Google parent Alphabet said they support a coordinated industry slowdown. More than 1,000 AI researchers recently signed a statement endorsing such a move.

AI executives have said government support would help such an initiative by giving the companies assurance that coordination wouldn't violate antitrust rules or cause other problems. Sacks said on X late Saturday that government involvement isn't needed if OpenAI and Anthropic, the two companies seen as leading the industry's development, agree to coordinate.

"Stop pretending you need anyone else's permission," Sacks, a venture capitalist, said in the post. "Go ahead and pace the frontier. You are the ones setting it."

Amodei said in an essay Saturday announcing his support for industry pacing of model development that the U.S. should "mediate or at least enable" any coordinated slowdown among AI companies to avoid antitrust concerns.

He told CBS in an interview that aired Sunday that he hoped Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping, when they meet later this month, could reach an agreement to ban the use of AI to develop biological weapons, an area of concern for researchers and national-security officials. "The more long-term thing would be working together to put a speed limit on the rate of AI progress. I think that's going to be very difficult" because of the military incentives of moving AI forward, he said.

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R., La.) said Congress should be cautious before imposing serious new AI regulations. He said guardrails need to be planned with the companies themselves and said he has discussed with Trump the idea of having all the top AI CEOs in a meeting to coordinate appropriate responses. The CEOs have rarely fully aligned on potential AI regulations.

"The guys that are calling for this are the ones that are pushing the frontier," Johnson said on CNN's "State of the Union." "If they want to slow that down, that's fine. But we also, at the same time, have to resist Congress jumping in and imposing some sort of emergency moratorium."

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D., N.Y.) said Congress should act urgently to mitigate AI risks.

"We should take decisive action now so that we can slow down" the technology's development, he said on ABC's "This Week," adding that Democrats have a meeting Tuesday and AI will be a priority.

Jeffries didn't say whether he would support a proposal by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I, Vt.) to attempt to ban superintelligence that is more capable than the most gifted humans.

Former President Barack Obama at a private fundraiser Thursday urged Democrats to develop a strategy with sensible guardrails to maximize the benefits of AI and prevent catastrophe. "This is something that is moving very fast in private hands, and if we don't get on top of it, I think can be dangerous," he said, according to his office.