Trump confirms meeting with Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei while reaffirming dismissal of AI safety fears

In a latest update US President Donald Trump confirmed a high-stakes dinner meeting with Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, coming amid an intense industry debate over artificial intelligence safety, regulatory frameworks, and national security

President Trump confirmed the meeting while pushing back against growing calls from tech leaders to slow down the relentless pace of AI development.

He doubled down on his stance that implementing strict domestic AI regulations would risk handing the technological high-ground to China. Highlighting America's current lead, Trump stated: "We're about maybe a year and a half up on China... We're leading, and we're building tremendous, trillions of dollars' worth of places. And why should we give that up?"

Why it matters?

Warnings about AI's risks are not new. But they took on added urgency this month after researchers in leading AI labs attached both a timeline and a probability to those concerns.

Former Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon warned that AI could kill us all by the end of the decade, prompting US lawmakers to call for new rules to govern the technology.

When asked about such warnings in the NBC interview, the excerpts of which were released earlier on Friday, Gates said "AI is certainly powerful enough to drive events that can cause a billion deaths."

Trump has previously described the chorus of AI concerns as a "hoax." Gates argued that safeguards would not dramatically hinder the industry, and that the risks of not implementing them are real.

"It's not a hoax at all," Gates told NBC.

Evan Hubinger, Anthropic’s alignment science lead, also echoed Coxon's warning, saying there was a more than 10% chance of such an event within the next decade.

Trump also reiterated his belief that new regulations would open the door for China to outpace the United States in AI advancement.

Although he acknowledged Amodei's concern that going too fast on artificial intelligence could expand risks, Trump said it's more important for the United States to maintain a technological edge over China.

As reported by Fox News, Trump confirms earlier that he would have dinner with Amodei on Sunday night.

The meeting comes as the CEOs of Anthropic rivals have called for slowing development of increasingly capable AI systems. These include OpenAI, Google’s, DeepMind, Microsoft, and xAI.