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US President Donald Trump said he will have a late dinner on Sunday night with Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, the top AI executive who has cautioned about the technology’s rapid pace of development, even as the president warns against slowing it.
The meeting comes after months of open conflict between the artificial intelligence startup (makers of Claude) and the Trump administration.
The private dinner is the first one-on-one meeting between the two men, according to US media outlet Axios, which first reported the later confirmed by Trump plans.
As he arrived at Joint Base Andrews near Washington after attending a golf tournament in Chicago, Trump joked about putting in a long day and having a late meal with Amodei.
“And tonight, I’m having dinner with the head of Anthropic, so these are long days, but I seem to be able to handle it. Right?,” Trump told reporters on the tarmac.
“So now I’m having dinner with Dario from, as you know, very highly respected, from Anthropic,” Trump said.
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 punished with sanctions by the Trump administration after refusing in February to allow its models 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 break in AI development.
Amodei was absent on Thursday at the state dinner held at the White House for Chinese President Xi Jinping, which was attended by AI industry leaders, including Amodei’s biggest rival, Sam Altman of OpenAI (makers of ChatGPT).
Despite mounting calls to slow down AI development due to the risk of losing human control of the technology, Trump insisted that the sector’s major players — OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and Meta — cannot afford to slow down over fears that China will gain the upper hand during their development hiatus.
Asked on Sunday about the numerous security incidents caused by advanced AI models, which included hacking into commercial and government websites, the Republican president dismissed these concerns, saying “I’m not worried about it.”
Trump and Mike Johnson, the speaker of the US House of Representatives, are also set to meet with leading AI executives on Tuesday.
Additional sources • AP, AFP