First lady Melania Trump called on students in North Carolina to lean into AI tools during a Sept. 15 appearance.
Speaking at Mountain View Elementary School in Ashe County, Trump honored people affected by Hurricane Helene nearly two years later. It was a relatively rare speaking engagement for the first lady, and she wore a dark green leather jacket, matching stilettos and an off-white sweater and skirt for the occasion.
The first lady’s speeches usually touch on her key initiatives like helping improve the foster care system and making AI more accessible for students. The short talk in North Carolina was no exception.
“Knowledge gives everyone in this town the chance to move beyond Helene and to imagine new possibilities,” she said. She also announced that, through a partnership with Nvidia, some students in Ashe County would receive AI literacy licenses through StudyFetch and robotics learning kits by Jetson Nano.
“Dream big, and use these AI tools to build something never created before,” she said.
Her remarks came at a time of intense debate over AI development, after Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei penned a letter Sept. 12 calling to slow down on innovation to “reduce the risk that something goes seriously wrong.” Both Elon Musk and Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, agreed publicly over the weekend.
President Donald Trump calls AI concerns a ‘hoax’
President Donald Trump’s administration has closely aligned itself with the AI industry and data center development. Melania Trump has also previously promoted the potential uses in schools. In March she convened an international summit for her Fostering the Future initiative, where she debuted a humanoid robot that she says could help teach students.
But safety concerns seemed to have spiked in recent weeks, in part spurred by a public resignation from Anthropic employee Jacob Coxon.
“They are racing straight to self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives,” he said in the Sept. 8 post. “The people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade. This is not a marketing stunt … No other human activity poses this level of danger.”
The first lady was asked about the concerns while visiting the classrooms after her speech.
“I think they need to learn. We need to lead as a AI, as a country, and we could see now what they’re learning, and it’s very important,” she said, according to the pool report. “Of course, they need to be vigilant as well. But this is our future, and we need to guide them and teach them what, what is available. If not, they will stay behind, and we need to be the first in United States to lead.”
President Trump has largely dismissed the concerns, pointing instead to the importance of beating China in developing the technology. His defense of AI turned into criticism of the concerns in a series of Truth Social posts Sept. 14.
“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!” Trump said at 9:48 a.m.
“AI taking over the World, destroying Humanity, and all other things bad, is a HOAX,” he wrote in a separate 1:33 p.m. post.
“The AI Hoax being perpetrated by the Radical Left Dumocrats is reminiscent of their Global Warming Scam of not so long ago,” Trump said later at 7:55 p.m.
Obama calls for action from Washington to regulate AI
Meanwhile, Democrats like former President Barack Obama have called on federal lawmakers to move to regulate the technology.
“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 in a Sept. 14 social media post.
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani on Sept. 2 announced a one-year moratorium that bans the use of student-facing generative AI for students 2K (early childhood) through eighth grade.
Data centers, which house servers and other equiptment that powers AI, have already become a flashpoint in the midterm elections as communities across the political spectrum reject local data center developments. But there, too, Donald Trump has been a fierce defender, suggesting it is a mistake for communities to resist the projects.
Contributing: Joey Garrison, Zac Anderson and Greta Cross, USA TODAY
Kinsey Crowley is the Trump Connect reporter for the USA TODAY Network. Reach her at KCrowley@usatodayco.com. Follow her on X (Twitter), Threads, Bluesky and TikTok.