Unlock the White House Watch newsletter for free
Your guide to what Trump’s second term means for Washington, business and the world
Donald Trump said he would have dinner with Anthropic chief Dario Amodei on Sunday evening in a sign of rapprochement between the US president and the head of the AI lab he accuses of being run by “left-wing weirdos” and which his administration has called a national security risk.
The White House dinner, which Trump announced would take place at 10 p.m., comes ahead of a meeting in Washington on Tuesday between the heads of U.S. AI companies and administration officials, amid a showdown over AI regulation.
Amodei is leading the charge for stricter oversight of AI, calling for a slowdown in the release of pioneering models, independent review of cybersecurity risks, and increased coordination between labs and governments.
Trump took the opposite position. The president has ruled out establishing a regulatory regime, warning it would slow the development of US AI – which he called the “goose that lays the golden eggs” – to the benefit of Chinese rivals.
Last week, he said the United States “rejects any attempt to build a globalist system” to control artificial intelligence.
“I’m all for it, let’s go ahead and win,” Trump said Sunday in an interview with Fox News. “We’re about a year, maybe a year and a half ahead of China. There’s no one in third place.”
In comments to the media ahead of the planned dinner, Trump called Amodei “highly respected.” Anthropic declined to comment.
Concern is also growing about AI agents going rogue. On Friday, OpenAI said it had notified “dozens” of partners, including governments, that its tools had breached their systems.
This followed news last week that an OpenAI agent had hacked an Australian Public Health Service website, accessing public and non-public files.
AI research group Transluce said last week that the latest incidents appeared to involve agents scouring the internet for information during repeated training exercises and going off-script.
Anthropic and OpenAI models were involved in a high-profile breach of AI model platform Hugging Face in July during security testing.
OpenAI’s Sam Altman and SpaceX’s Elon Musk joined Amodei in calling for a “pace” of AI development so that safety testing can keep up with the technology’s deployment.
Musk is expected to travel to Washington for Tuesday’s event, alongside Nvidia’s Jensen Huang – who has rejected calls for laws governing AI – and other Anthropic officials.
Amodei’s meeting with Trump comes after a federal appeals court in Washington last week upheld a Pentagon ban on Anthropic’s products, which was imposed this year after the company included restrictions on the use of its AI in warfare.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth at the time accused Amodei of putting on a “masterclass in arrogance,” while Trump denounced the company as “radical left.”
Another California court ruled in August that the Pentagon had engaged in “unlawful retaliation.” Anthropic is studying the possibility of appealing Washington’s decision.
Additional reporting by Amy Mackinnon in Washington
Gn headline
