President Trump had a private dinner with Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei late Sunday night, the president confirmed.
White House officials have not released any details of what was discussed at the dinner.
The dinner comes as Amodei has been warning about the “exponential growth” of AI and has called for safeguards on the industry. Mr. Trump has resisted the idea of imposing regulations, saying that in the race between the U.S. and China, “whoever wins AI wins.”
Mr. Trump said Sunday before the dinner that he and Amodei were going to “talk about” about AI regulations.
“I’m for let’s go and let’s win,” Mr. Trump said. “You know we’re about a year, maybe a year and a half up on China. There is nobody in third place. I mean it’s just us and China.”
The news of the dinner was first reported by Axios.
Mr. Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping agreed last week to set up an AI safety channel for handling issues that may arise between the two countries.
Mr. Trump, House Speaker Mike Johnson and other AI executives are planning on meeting at the White House on Tuesday. A source directly familiar with Amodei’s plans says that he will attend Tuesday’s White House luncheon.
Anthropic, which develops Claude technology, and the Trump administration have had a rocky relationship, with the Pentagon earlier this year declaring the AI company a “supply chain risk” after Anthropic said its technology should not be used for mass surveillance of Americans or to power fully autonomous weapons. A judge earlier this month upheld the supply chain risk designation.
At a time when most tech CEOs have feted Mr. Trump, Amodei had so far resisted. Mr. Trump had called the Anthropic leaders “leftwing nut jobs.”
Amodei told CBS News’ Jo Ling Kent in an interview earlier this month, “I don’t think I fully just appreciated what it would actually be like when the progress [on AI] was as fast as it was.”
