Policy & Regulation
Anthropic's CEO to dine with Trump amid AI safety rift
Dario Amodei is set to have dinner with President Trump at the White House tonight, their first one-on-one meeting since the two clashed over AI safety.
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei is set to have dinner with President Donald Trump at the White House tonight, in what will be the first one-on-one meeting between the two men. Axios first reported the dinner plans, and TechCrunch subsequently confirmed the meeting with a source familiar with Amodei’s plans.
The dinner comes as Amodei and Trump have recently landed on opposite sides of the debate over how fast artificial intelligence should advance. Amodei released a plan calling for slowing AI development, or at least proceeding with more caution. Trump, for his part, has insisted, without evidence, that the backlash against AI is a Democratic hoax, and has pushed to rebrand the technology as “super intelligence.”
The meeting also follows a relationship between Anthropic and the Trump administration that was already fraught before this current back-and-forth over AI safety. Earlier this year, the Pentagon designated Anthropic a supply-chain risk, a response to the company’s attempt to put guardrails around the use of its technology; Anthropic has been fighting that designation in court. The friction hasn’t been universal, though — other administration officials have been friendlier toward the company.
Amodei’s high profile this weekend isn’t limited to politics: he was also lampooned in the season premiere of Saturday Night Live.
Why it matters
The dinner shows how central Anthropic’s approach to AI safety has become to its relationship with Washington, even as the company fights the Pentagon’s supply-chain risk designation in court.