San Francisco (United States) (AFP) – Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei is set to dine one-on-one with President Donald Trump at the White House on Sunday evening, a tech industry source confirmed to AFP. The meeting comes after months of open conflict between the artificial intelligence startup and the Trump administration. The private dinner would be the first one-on-one meeting between the two men, according to US media including Axios, which first reported the dinner plan.
The invitation comes two days after a federal appeals court upheld the Pentagon’s decision to classify Anthropic as a “supply chain risk,” which prohibits the United States military from using its models. The startup had been sanctioned by the Trump administration after refusing in February to allow its tools to be used for fully autonomous weapons or domestic mass surveillance. Trump also badmouthed Amodei, saying he was trying to be “a perfect little angel” after the Anthropic chief called for a pause in AI development.
Amodei was absent Thursday at the state dinner for Chinese President Xi Jinping attended by AI industry leaders, including Amodei rival Sam Altman of OpenAI. Despite mounting calls to slow down AI development due to the risk of losing control of the technology, the US government believes that the sector’s major players — OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and Meta — cannot afford to slow down for fear that China will gain the upper hand.
Asked Sunday by Fox News about the numerous security incidents caused by advanced AI models, the president dismissed these concerns, saying “I’m not worried about it.” Trump and Mike Johnson, the speaker of the House of Representatives, are set to meet with leading AI executives on Tuesday.
© 2024 AFP
