Trump meets AI executives as safety debate intensifies

President Donald Trump will meet with leading artificial intelligence executives at the White House on Tuesday, bringing together companies divided over how quickly the technology should advance and what safeguards it needs. Earlier in the day, he plans to unveil an AI-powered website to help Americans find federal services.

The White House meeting comes as executives at companies including Anthropic and OpenAI warn about the risks of increasingly capable AI systems and call for greater oversight. Trump has called some warnings a “hoax” and argued that slowing development could cost the United States its lead over China.

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, OpenAI President Greg Brockman and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg are expected at the meeting with Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson. CBS News reported that Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Palantir CEO Alex Karp and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang also plan to attend. The meeting is scheduled for 12:30 p.m. in the White House East Room, according to CBS News.

Amodei has urged safeguards for the industry. According to CBS News, he had a private dinner with Trump on Sunday, and Trump said beforehand that AI regulation would be part of their discussion. Other industry leaders disagree about the scale of the danger: Nvidia’s Huang has argued that warnings are overblown and that guardrails could undercut the U.S. advantage over China, CBS News reported.

Trump has emphasized competition. “Whoever wins AI… whoever wins SI, whoever wins super intelligence, wins,” he told the United Nations General Assembly last week. “That’s the group that wins, and we’re leading now over China by a lot and everyone else, and we’re going to keep it that way.” He said he would not “stifle growth” in a technology that many believe could have a greater impact than the Industrial Revolution or the internet, while promising to be careful.

Johnson said Monday that the meeting would seek the “right balance” between regulation and innovation. In an appearance on Fox Business, he said existing product-liability laws and federal regulations can apply to AI companies. “We do not need a moratorium,” he said. “We do not need to jump in and hyperregulate this, because we’ll lose the race to China.”

NBC News reported that Johnson began pushing for an AI summit after Jacob Coxon resigned from Anthropic and warned that people building the systems believed they could “kill us all by the end of the decade.” Lawmakers have introduced dozens of AI-related bills in recent years, but the Republican-controlled Congress is showing little urgency to act, NBC News reported.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune said he would not attend Tuesday’s meeting but hoped it would be “productive.” He met with Amodei at the Capitol on Monday.

Before the White House gathering, Trump is expected to introduce America.gov at the Andrew W. Mellon Auditorium. A White House official described the AI-powered portal as “a new front door for the federal government” that would bring together information and resources now spread across agency websites. NBC News reported that the National Design Studio, an agency led by Airbnb co-founder Joe Gebbia, helped create it. Vice President JD Vance, Cabinet officials and tech leaders are also expected at the unveiling.