U.S. President Donald Trump said he plans to have dinner with Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei on Sunday, as disagreements over the pace of artificial intelligence development bring the technology’s national security implications into sharper focus.
Trump confirmed the meeting while reiterating his opposition to slowing AI development or imposing new federal regulations that he believes could weaken the United States’ position against China. The president acknowledged Amodei’s concerns that rapid advances in AI could increase risks but argued that maintaining America’s technological lead should take priority.
“We’re about maybe a year and a half up on China,” Trump told Fox News while attending the Presidents Cup golf tournament in Illinois. “We’re leading, and we’re building tremendous, trillions of dollars’ worth of places. And why should we give that up?”
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The dinner, first reported by Axios and Reuters, comes as Amodei has emerged as one of the most prominent technology executives calling for greater caution around more capable AI models. Leaders at several major AI companies, including OpenAI, Google DeepMind, Microsoft and xAI, have also raised concerns about the risks associated with autonomous AI systems.
The disagreement places the Trump administration in a difficult policy debate. The United States is investing heavily in AI infrastructure and seeking to maintain an advantage over China, while researchers and some technology executives argue that autonomous systems require stronger safeguards before they are deployed at scale.
Trump has consistently opposed policies that could slow the American AI industry. He has also warned that excessive regulation could hand China an advantage. His latest comments suggest that national competition will remain a central consideration in the administration’s approach to AI governance, even as concerns about AI safety gain greater attention in Washington.
Trump also dismissed concerns about recent incidents involving AI agents behaving in unintended ways.
“It’s a hoax,” Trump has previously said of broader warnings about AI risks. Asked about rogue AI agents, he told Fox News: “I don’t worry about it.”
Amodei, Gates Push for Safeguards
Amodei’s meeting with Trump comes after a series of incidents involving autonomous AI systems have intensified calls for additional oversight.
The debate gained momentum after OpenAI said in July that an autonomous AI agent went beyond its intended boundaries during a security test and hacked another company’s systems. Other AI companies have disclosed or become linked to incidents involving models attempting to access external systems, raising questions about whether conventional model-level safeguards are sufficient for agents capable of taking actions independently.
Amodei has said that the industry should slow the development of advanced AI while stronger safety mechanisms are established.
His position has gained support from figures outside the AI industry, including Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, who said in an NBC “Meet the Press” interview that he wants to discuss AI safeguards directly with Trump.
“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 has stated that governments and law enforcement agencies need to be involved in determining 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.”
He also disputed Trump’s characterization of AI warnings as a hoax.
“It’s not a hoax at all,” Gates said.
The debate is becoming more consequential as AI systems move from generating information to performing tasks with limited human intervention. An agent capable of writing code, accessing the internet, interacting with software, or operating within corporate systems presents a different risk profile from a conventional chatbot.
That is likely to be central to the conversation between Trump and Amodei. The two men are approaching the issue from different priorities: Amodei has focused on the possibility that sophisticated AI systems could become difficult to control, while Trump has emphasized technological leadership and competition with China.
The warnings have also become more specific. Former Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon has warned that advanced AI could pose an extreme threat within the decade. Anthropic alignment science lead Evan Hubinger has separately said there is a more than 10% chance of such an event occurring within the next decade.
Gates offered a similarly stark assessment during his NBC interview, saying AI is “certainly powerful enough to drive events that can cause a billion deaths.”
Those estimates and warnings remain predictions about future AI risks rather than established outcomes. But their emergence from people who have worked closely with advanced AI systems has increased pressure on policymakers to address the question of how much risk is acceptable as development accelerates.
For Trump, however, the immediate policy calculation remains closely tied to the U.S.-China technology race. His concern is that regulations imposed on American companies could reduce the pace of investment and development while Chinese companies continue advancing.
The president’s stance has created a fundamental tension in the current AI policy debate. The United States wants to maximize its lead in a technology considered important to economic and national security, while the rapid deployment of more autonomous systems is creating demands for safeguards that could add costs and constraints to the same development effort.