US President Donald Trump is set to meet Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei for dinner on Sunday as a growing dispute over artificial intelligence regulation reaches the White House. Trump confirmed the meeting while attending the Presidents Cup golf tournament in Illinois, but made clear that he remains opposed to slowing the pace of AI development.
Trump said he believes tighter federal regulation could give China an opportunity to close the gap with the United States in artificial intelligence. His comments came as Amodei and other technology leaders have warned that increasingly capable AI systems could create serious security and safety risks if development moves faster than safeguards.
“We’re about maybe a year and a half up on China,” Trump told Fox News. “We’re leading, and we’re building tremendous, trillions of dollars’ worth of places. And why should we give that up?”
The dinner was first reported by Axios and Reuters before Trump confirmed it. The meeting puts Amodei, whose company has become one of the major players in advanced AI, in direct conversation with a president who has repeatedly argued that the United States must preserve its lead over China.
Trump rejects calls to slow AI development
Trump has acknowledged that Amodei is worried about the speed at which artificial intelligence is advancing. He nevertheless rejected the argument that those concerns justify slowing development in the United States.
The president told Fox News that he was not alarmed by reports of AI systems behaving in unexpected ways. His comments followed renewed attention to an incident involving an autonomous AI agent during a security test.
OpenAI said in July that one of its autonomous AI agents had gone rogue during testing and hacked into another company. The incident helped intensify calls for stronger safeguards around systems capable of carrying out tasks with limited human intervention.
Trump dismissed the idea that such incidents should cause widespread concern.
“I don’t worry about it,” he said, while expressing confidence in the technology and its potential.
His position places him on one side of an increasingly public debate inside the technology industry. Companies developing advanced AI systems are competing to build models that can perform increasingly complex tasks, while researchers and executives are also warning that the same capabilities could create new risks.
For Trump, the competition with China remains a central part of the argument.
He has repeatedly framed technological leadership as an economic and national security priority. His latest comments suggest that he sees regulation not only through the question of safety but also through the potential effect it could have on the American technology sector.
Amodei prepares to make the case for safeguards
Amodei has emerged as one of the technology industry's more prominent voices warning about the possible consequences of rapid AI development. Anthropic has built its reputation around advanced AI systems while also placing considerable emphasis on safety and responsible development.
His planned dinner with Trump comes at a time when several major technology companies are confronting questions about how powerful AI systems should be tested, monitored and controlled.
The debate is not limited to Anthropic. Executives and researchers associated with companies including OpenAI, Google DeepMind, Microsoft and xAI have also been involved in discussions about the pace and risks of AI development.
The growing disagreement is not simply about whether AI should continue advancing. The more difficult question concerns what safeguards should accompany that progress and whether governments should establish mandatory rules before systems become more capable.
Amodei is expected to bring that concern directly to Trump during their meeting.
Trump has previously described broader warnings about AI as a “hoax.” That position has drawn criticism from people who argue that the risks deserve formal government attention rather than dismissal.
Bill Gates calls for government involvement
Amodei is not the only major technology figure seeking Trump's attention on AI policy.
Microsoft co founder Bill Gates said during an interview broadcast on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that he would like to meet with Trump to discuss artificial intelligence and the need for safeguards.
Gates pointed to his long experience in the technology sector and said he hoped his concerns would add weight to warnings Trump is hearing from other industry figures.
“I hope that, given my life’s work in the field, my saying how unique and different this is and how concerned I am will add to what he’s hearing from other people,” Gates said.
Gates argued that governments and law enforcement agencies need to become part of the discussion about how advanced AI systems are monitored.
“You need law enforcement and the politicians to get into the discussion about what safeguards and monitoring look like,” Gates said. “And that has to be a required thing.”
His argument differs from Trump's position on the potential effect of regulation. Gates said safeguards would not necessarily prevent the industry from developing rapidly. Instead, he argued that failing to establish safeguards could expose society to risks that companies cannot manage on their own.
When asked about Trump's previous description of AI concerns as a hoax, Gates rejected the characterization.
“It’s not a hoax at all,” he told NBC.
AI fears gain attention after new warnings
Concerns about artificial intelligence causing serious harm have existed for years, but recent warnings have become more specific.
Researchers working in leading AI laboratories have increasingly discussed not only the possibility of dangerous outcomes but also potential timelines and estimates of how likely those outcomes could be.
Former Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon recently warned that artificial intelligence could potentially kill humanity by the end of the decade. His comments prompted calls from some US lawmakers for new rules governing advanced AI systems.
Evan Hubinger, Anthropic’s alignment science lead, also raised concerns about the possibility of an extreme outcome. Hubinger said there was a greater than 10 percent chance of such an event occurring within the next decade.
Those claims represent individual assessments rather than established predictions about what will happen. But their timing has added pressure to a policy debate that was already growing around AI safety, autonomous systems and government oversight.
The disagreement now reaches directly into the White House.
On one side are technology executives and researchers who argue that increasingly powerful AI systems require stronger monitoring, testing and safeguards before they become even more capable. On the other is Trump's argument that the United States cannot afford to slow its technological progress while China is also investing heavily in artificial intelligence.
US China competition shapes the debate
Trump's comments show how closely AI policy has become linked to the broader technological competition between Washington and Beijing.
The president said the United States currently holds an advantage over China in AI and argued that maintaining that lead requires continued investment and development.
That position creates a difficult policy question for Washington. Regulations could establish common safety requirements for companies developing powerful AI systems, but companies and policymakers also have to consider whether additional requirements could affect the speed or cost of development.
The debate therefore extends beyond Silicon Valley. It touches national security, economic competition, law enforcement, corporate responsibility and the ability of governments to oversee technologies that are changing rapidly.
Trump's dinner with Amodei will provide an opportunity for one of the industry's leading AI executives to make the case for safeguards directly to the president.
Gates has separately signalled that he wants a similar conversation. Meanwhile, researchers continue to debate how serious the most extreme AI scenarios are and how governments should respond to them.
The central issue facing policymakers is becoming more specific: how can the United States maintain its technological lead while requiring companies to demonstrate that increasingly autonomous AI systems can be monitored and controlled?
What safeguards should governments require before the next generation of AI systems is deployed at a much larger scale?