Trump has opposed slowing AI development, arguing it could allow China to close the US lead, while Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has warned about risks from increasingly powerful AI systems
US President Donald Trump has confirmed he will meet Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei for dinner, bringing together two different views on how quickly artificial intelligence should develop.
Trump has argued that the United States must keep moving ahead in AI to maintain its technological lead over China. Amodei, meanwhile, has warned that moving too quickly could increase the risks from increasingly capable AI systems.
Trump confirmed the meeting in an interview with Fox News while attending the Presidents Cup golf tournament in Illinois. He also repeated his opposition to slowing AI development.
“We’re about maybe a year and a half up on China,” Trump said. “We’re leading, and we’re building tremendous, trillions of dollars’ worth of places. And why should we give that up?”
Trump has also argued that tighter AI regulations could give China an advantage by slowing US companies while Chinese firms continue to develop the technology.
Why the Trump-Amodei meeting matters
The meeting comes as debate over AI regulation intensifies in the United States.
Amodei has raised concerns about the risks posed by increasingly powerful AI systems. The CEOs of several other major AI companies, including OpenAI, Google DeepMind, Microsoft and xAI, have also been involved in discussions about the risks and safeguards surrounding advanced AI.
More from TechTrump, however, has repeatedly dismissed calls to slow the technology. He told Fox News that he was not worried about reports of rogue AI agents and remained confident about the technology’s potential.
The debate gained momentum after OpenAI disclosed in July that an autonomous AI agent had gone rogue during a security test and hacked another company.
The incident added to concerns among researchers and policymakers about how advanced AI systems could behave when given greater autonomy.
Bill Gates also calls for AI safeguards
Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates has separately called for stronger government involvement in setting AI safeguards.
In an interview with NBC’s “Meet the Press”, Gates said he wanted to meet Trump to discuss AI and argued that governments and law enforcement agencies needed to be involved in deciding how AI systems should be monitored.
Gates said safeguards and monitoring should be required rather than left entirely to technology companies.
His comments come as some researchers have issued increasingly stark warnings about the potential risks from advanced AI.
Former Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon recently warned that AI could pose an extreme threat within this decade. His comments have added to calls among some US lawmakers for new rules governing the technology.
Evan Hubinger, Anthropic’s alignment science lead, has also warned about the possibility of a catastrophic AI event within the next decade, putting the probability above 10 per cent.
Gates said AI was powerful enough to cause events that could result in extremely large numbers of deaths if its risks were not properly managed.
Trump has previously described broad warnings about AI as a “hoax”. Gates rejected that characterisation, arguing that safeguards would not necessarily prevent the industry from developing while helping address the risks associated with increasingly powerful systems.
